US Air Force News

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Fri Mar 22, 2024 4:21 am

Why do I think that the cost of refurbishing the silos and LCCs for the Sentinel are going to be way over estimates?

They Stood Sentry over America's Nuclear Missile Arsenal. Many Worry It Gave Them Cancer.
By Thomas Novelly
March 07, 2024

Danny Sebeck was shaving on an August day in 2022, when he spotted a lump on his neck he hadn't noticed before. It was probably nothing, he thought.

Later that month, he was talking with a close friend who said he had noticed a similar bump, too. The two had served together at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, as missileers -- a high-stress job in which young officers are stationed below ground in launch control centers to keep careful watch over and, if called upon, fire America's nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.

While Sebeck was feeling OK, his friend was experiencing fatigue, night sweats and swollen lymph nodes and decided to go to his doctor. Shortly after, his friend learned he had non-Hodgkin lymphoma, an aggressive form of cancer that can be fatal to nearly one-third of those who receive a diagnosis, according to the American Cancer Society.

Sebeck was worried and quickly sought out doctors of his own. The 42-year-old husband and father had never been sick, never broken a bone, never had stitches, never spent a night in the hospital. But he'd heard the rumors.

For years, it was an open secret among missileers that the Cold War-era missile alert facilities and launch control centers where they'd spend days sleeping, eating and staying on alert in case of nuclear armageddon were filled with things that might get them sick -- carcinogens such as PCBs, lead paint, asbestos and tainted water. And every missileer veteran had at least one close friend who was battling a form of cancer.

"In the back of my mind, I was like, 'I bet I have the same cancer this guy has,'" Sebeck told Military.com. "There was too much in common with this. We're about the same age; we both worked at the same bases and places."

His gut feeling was right, and the next month, in September 2022, Sebeck was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Sebeck, an active-duty Space Force officer, began researching other cases of missileers diagnosed with cancer, an effort that eventually culminated in "The Malmstrom Initiative" slides, a presentation he crafted that outlined alarming indications of cancer clusters in the community. When the presentation leaked to the press, it kicked off a scramble to figure out what is making so many missileers sick, including a major new study now underway by the Department of the Air Force.

A monthslong investigation by Military.com that included government record requests, a two-day site visit to one of the nation's nuclear missile bases, and dozens of interviews with current and former Air Force missileers, as well as the relatives of some who have passed away, found that the U.S. government has overlooked evidence of cancer clusters. Two separate small studies of missileer cancer clusters in the early 2000s failed to recognize the growing problem in the community, with that lack of recognition making it difficult for some missileers to prove to the Department of Veterans Affairs that their illnesses were related to military service, a precursor to securing some benefits.

The military branches also appear to have failed to properly account for contaminants that have been linked to cancer for decades, particularly PCBs, which are still prevalent at unsafe levels in some missile facilities, according to testing done in the wake of the Sebeck presentation.

Instead, the Air Force spent decades telling service members that it was safe, that they could descend into the ground to serve their countries without undue risk, while it was simultaneously aware that threats were present: Official documents are littered with references to the dangerous chemicals and substances that would surround airmen.

John Heiser, who had been stationed at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota for four years as a missileer, immediately thought of the old manuals he'd leafed through as a young officer when he was diagnosed at 30 years old with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Those manuals had warned about the strange, sticky oily substance -- polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs -- which seemed to be in a lot of the equipment in the launch control center.

"Everything had warnings all over the place about pieces of equipment," Heiser told Military.com.

The Toxic Substances Act of 1976 outlawed many carcinogens, including asbestos and PCBs, both of which were used in the construction of missile systems and facilities. Nearly two decades later, in a 1994 Government Accountability Office report, the military services, including the Air Force, admitted they had not done enough to clean up those sites or follow the Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines.

"Although the Toxic Substances Control Act has been in existence for more than 15 years, DoD installations are still not meeting the EPA requirements regarding monitoring, storing, labeling, and disposing of PCB items," the 1994 report says. "In some cases, installations have not corrected problems even when cited by EPA or other monitoring agencies for violations, such as not performing periodic inspections or not cleaning up spilled PCB material."

These issues seemed to boil over in 2001, when the Department of the Air Force was notified that three service members at Malmstrom had been diagnosed with lymphoma, prompting an environmental study. Possible toxins ranging from diesel fuel, PCBs, contaminants from burnt paper tapes, biological exposure from standing water and sewage backup, pesticides, herbicides, chlorophenols and carbon dioxide were cited in the report.

"I remember discussions about previous missileers and a history of people being diagnosed with cancer," said Marie Naidas, a missileer who served at Malmstrom during the 2001 study. She said many missileers eagerly awaited the results. "It was something we knew about back then."

But officials proclaimed all was well.

"Extensive air, water and soil sampling indicates that the workplace is free of health hazards," the 2001 report detailed. "We consider the work area to be a safe and healthy environment for your personnel."

In a follow-up memo in 2003, Air Force officials pitched the idea of a long-ranging epidemiological study. It never happened. Two years later, another study doubled down once more. "We believe that there is not sufficient evidence to consider the possibility of a cancer clustering to justify further investigation," officials wrote.

For decades, the problem went ignored, and those concerns were relegated to watercooler talk for missileers who'd warn colleagues about friends and former airmen diagnosed with cancer at a young age.

More than two decades after the initial 2001 study, in January 2023, Sebeck's "The Malmstrom Initiative" started circulating online.

The presentation detailed 36 cases in which missileers who had been stationed at Malmstrom were diagnosed with a type of cancer. Ten of the airmen who had received cancer diagnoses, according to Sebeck's research, developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Two developed Hodgkin lymphoma, and 24 developed other forms of cancer. Overall, eight of the 36 missileers with cancer diagnoses, the majority of whom served at Malmstrom sometime between 1997 and 2007, had died.

It sparked a major issue for the Space Force, which was created in late 2019 and relies heavily on transfers from the other services to fill its ranks. A fair number, roughly 400, of the service's current officers are former missileers.

A few weeks after Sebeck's slide deck was published online, Air Force Global Strike Command authorized a new wide-ranging study -- one that looked at all three of the nation's intercontinental ballistic missile bases, as well as all jobs related to protecting, maintaining and supporting them, to determine their risk.

It's a widespread study, which is pulling from multiple Department of Defense, VA, national and state databases to examine electronic medical records, cancer rates, and cancer and death indexes.

Col. Tory Woodard, commander of the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, who is heading up the new research into cancer clusters, was hesitant to speak to any possible shortcomings of the 2001 and 2005 studies, saying that "the team at the time used the data they had available to them."

"The studies that were done in 2001 and 2005, the [Pentagon] did not have a large electronic medical record; there was just some data limitations. We didn't have access to the national databases, cancer rates and things that we have available to us now and with the speed and efficiency that we can look at those," Woodard said, adding that the new study will have the benefit of a number of new resources.

But the toxic dangers of PCBs have been known for 47 years, and the congressional watchdog's recognition that the service was not properly labeling, storing or identifying the carcinogens was well known for about 30 years. Even when it was reported a little more than 20 years ago that airmen were getting sick and it could potentially be connected to elements in the missile facilities, officials did not deem further studies to be warranted.

Sebeck, who spoke to Military.com under the condition that he would share stories about his personal health and was not expressing viewpoints on behalf of the Space Force, Department of the Air Force or the Department of Defense, said that the warnings he received from other missileers when he was a young officer didn't resonate until he got his diagnosis and did his own research.

"I knew 20 years ago. People would talk to me and say, 'Hey, some of these guys have cancer.' And now I know all those guys' names and I know their families and their stories," Sebeck said.

A Log of the Past
In the wake of Sebeck's presentation, a grassroots organization called the Torchlight Initiative was created by a group of former missileers. They started a website to tell personal stories, like Sebeck's, and began collecting data for a registry of self-reported cancer diagnoses from those who have served at America's nuclear missile bases.

As of February, the Torchlight Initiative found that 87, or about 25%, of the 347 registered missile community cancer cases at that time in its registry were blood cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma. By comparison, of cancer diagnoses in the U.S., 10% are blood cancers, according to a fact sheet from Yale Medicine, the Ivy League university's medical school.

On a recent January day at Paul Hunke's Colorado Springs home, the former missileer sat in his living room thumbing through a miniature composition journal, the pages and cover of which have become frayed and faded with time.

It's a detailed personal diary that logs every assignment he had as a young missileer, 60 feet under the Montana soil. As he thumbs through it, his fingers pass over a name: Capt. Brad Trent.

They had worked together on his 61st alert as a missileer. Trent was his commander when he went underground at the Juliet Missile Alert facility located in the vast and remote Montana plains.

Trent died at the age of 40 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Elevated levels of PCBs were found at Malmstrom, and one contaminated site was the Juliet Missile Alert Facility where Hunke and Trent worked together.

Hunke's journal, which once evoked nostalgia, now inspires dread. He was there in 2005 when the Air Force conducted its follow-up cancer study at Malmstrom, and officials proclaimed in their report that "sometimes, illnesses tend to occur by chance alone."

He felt like they weren't taking the probe seriously.

"I bet they're going to just tell us everything is fine, everything is safe," Hunke recalled saying to his fellow airmen at the time. "Yet you would look down into the bottom of the capsule ... and you'd see raw sewage sitting down there. You can just smell all of the chemicals that are going on, and so we're all kind of, like, skeptical."

Dozens of former missileers who have spent days at a time in the enclosed launch control centers recounted similar experiences to Military.com.

A Torchlight Initiative report detailed that maintenance dispatches, technical orders and warning labels at launch control centers show that "PCBs were present in the battery charger capacitors, filter monitors, power supply units, light ballasts, and in many electronic filter boxes and electrical capacitors used throughout the WS-133A-M and WS-133B Minuteman weapon systems."

Many troops would handle potentially PCB-coated components without gloves or other protective equipment.

PCBs have been linked to many health concerns involving the liver, skin, reproductive, endocrine, neurological and immune systems, according to research from the National Institutes of Health. They have been present in the launch control centers and launch facilities for all variants of the Minuteman weapon system since 1962.

Exposure could have happened when crews removed or replaced certain components or when water seeped into PCB-contaminated electrical boxes. Crew members could have walked through PCB residue, tracking it onto the launch control center's carpet -- or even into their own vehicles and homes.

When PCB oil dries, it creates a dust that can be inhaled or absorbed through skin.

Despite undergoing a brand-new study where they promised to look at new data, officials still refuse to say they missed the mark in addressing those cancer concerns.

"We all have hope, and we pray that the Air Force is going to do the right thing and be honest and forthright about everything," Hunke told Military.com. "It seems like they are but, boy, we were all skeptical."

Hunke told Military.com that he has become a "paranoid hypochondriac" since the news of a potential cancer cluster spread. He's constantly feeling for lumps on his neck, frequently calls his doctor, and every ache and pain brings him immediate concern.

He also carries some guilt.

Hunke's son, Benjamin, decided to join the Air Force and wanted to work as a missileer, just like his father. He arrived at his first duty station this year, Malmstrom Air Force Base, in the same squadron. Hunke is proud of his son and is honored by his service to the country but, as a father, he's concerned.

Hunke wants the Air Force to act fast, to ensure the next generation feels safe in their jobs.

But Hunke worries that the reputation may already be tainted. He was going out to dinner with his son and his classmates when they graduated from technical school at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and overheard discussion among them.

"All of those students were sitting around a table, it was the night after graduation, and one of them said, 'you know, we're all getting cancer, so it doesn't matter.'"

Hunke replied, "Guys, don't joke about that, because you don't know how real that is."

Going on Alert
Last year, Malmstrom and Minot both found levels of PCBs above the Environmental Protection Agency's threshold of 10 micrograms per 100 square centimeters. F.E. Warren Air Force Base also detected the carcinogen but below that threshold, the service said.

It was the first acknowledgment by military officials that dangers lurking in the launch control centers and missile alert facilities might be creating hazardous conditions for service members.

At F.E. Warren, a concrete bunker sits at the bottom of an elevator shaft that descends 60 feet beneath the frozen Great Plains soil. There, in January, two fresh-faced Air Force officers in their 20s were waiting and prepared, at a moment's notice, to unleash the nuclear missile buried underground with them.

Capt. William Young and 2nd Lt. Trevor Straub were in a launch control center for a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, located about an hour from the base. They sat in pilot chairs overlooking a massive computer terminal filled with switches, keyboards, screens and phones reminiscent of a 1970s television studio. The room is outdated and small, complete with a bathroom like those found on commercial airplanes and a small bed covered by a curtain.

Loud beeps from the computer terminal filled the small space, sending the two young men scrambling. They drew a curtain to keep their work out of view of this reporter and, a few clicks and a phone call later, the noise stopped. It could have been a test or a false alarm, but it clearly wasn't nuclear war -- at least not this time.

The job of guarding, operating and repairing the Minuteman III ICBM missile looks mostly the same at F.E. Warren in Wyoming, Malmstrom in Montana or Minot in North Dakota. The same as it has for decades.

It's a 24-hour mission, often followed by 48 hours off, that requires the young men and women to be ready at a moment's notice. They may need to fix electrical components, keyboards and more to make sure they are prepared at all times, despite substances that might be lurking in the equipment.

Col. Jared Nelson, the commander of the 90th Operations Group, which oversees missileers such as Straub and Young at F.E. Warren, said that, when he was a young missileer stationed at Minot, he "didn't really know to even ask the question" whether he had been exposed to anything during his service.

But he said those concerns shouldn't weigh heavily on his missileers' minds.

"I think it's not something that every day we're walking around moping around and going on and wondering, 'Do you have cancer? Do I have cancer?' That's not worth thinking about," Nelson said. "We don't believe day-to-day we're still in this environment that's going to kill us."

For the young officers in their 20s who are spending their days under the Great Plains, that mentality seems to carry over. They're not thinking about their future health, they're thinking about their current duties.

“We accept some of the inherent risk," Straub said when asked whether he was concerned about the ongoing cancer studies. "We have a mission to finish."

In response to those risks, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, the Air Force Global Strike commander, ordered cleanup efforts, no matter the amount, at all three of the bases.

"I want a deep understanding of any potential risk there is or could be to our airmen and Guardians and to the force," Bussiere said in a press release. "This is not about one base, one AFSC, or one rank. It's about all airmen of all [Air Force Specialty Codes] that support our mission and about all of our locations and operating environments."

In response, the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and the Defense Centers for Public Health collected air and swipe samples from launch control centers and launch control equipment buildings at all three ICBM bases.

Soon, other bases will also be screened for environmental carcinogens.

Air Force officials said Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, which does rocket launches and missile tests, is also being reexamined. In mid-February, air, water, radon and PCB sampling was done, and those results are being analyzed.

"We will use the environmental sampling results from Vandenberg, historical documentation and a review of current operations to help us define what, if any, environmental sampling should be done at the [launch facilities]," Woodard, the commander of the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, told Military.com in December.

A third round of environmental sampling is scheduled for this spring, according to service officials. But in addition to examining more air, water, soil and surface samples in and around missile alert facilities and launch control centers, a larger health study is also ongoing.

"The study is not looking at only non-Hodgkin lymphoma," Woodard said. "So, we're really, as we do this, we're looking for 14 common cancers to make sure that we look at all those rates of cancers."

A town hall presentation from Air Force Global Strike Command shared with Military.com in December showed the service is also aiming its study at other generations of veterans who served at older Titan II and Minuteman II bases, the earlier variants of the ICBMs used as part of America's nuclear arsenal. That includes veterans who served at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota; Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona; Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri; McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas; and Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.

Maj. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser, the commander of the 20th Air Force, which oversees ICBM operations, told Military.com in an interview at F.E. Warren that it's clear this study is personal.

"If you're a missileer, you have a best friend that has [non-Hodgkin lymphoma]," Huser said.

Retired Col. Jim Warner, a former missileer and the executive director of the Association of Air Force Missileers, told Military.com that his group has been closely following the issue and is helping the Air Force with its investigation. He also wonders how widespread the potential cancer cluster might be.

"Is it limited to operators or does the impact go into the maintenance, security forces, and support career fields? Is this a Minuteman problem or does it go back to Atlas, Titan and Peacekeeper?" Warner wrote last year. "I will defer to the Air Force to provide the answers. Sadly, this issue will be with us for many years to come."

Last year, when asked about the specific details of the cleanup and mitigation efforts, including whether missileers would be displaced from their routine workspaces, an Air Force Global Strike Command spokeswoman did not provide specifics, saying policies and procedures were being implemented by the workforces at those bases.

Since then, extensive cleanup efforts happened at Malmstrom and Minot but have not yet happened at F.E. Warren. Charles Hoffman, an Air Force Global Strike Command spokesman, told Military.com that service members assisted in those initial cleanup efforts and “cleaning continues.”

"Military bioenvironmental engineer teams have been conducting cleaning operations where mitigatable PCBs had been discovered," Hoffman said. "Using appropriate personal protective equipment and under the oversight of and partnership with bioenvironmental engineers, a small number of volunteer service members and civilians conduct the cleaning operations."

But he added that "in the future, PCB contractors will conduct cleaning operations" and said Air Force Global Strike Command is in the final stages of "securing a contract to clean PCBs at all missile wings."

Nelson, the commander of the 90th Operations Group at F.E. Warren, said he trusts that leadership is doing all they can to clean and mitigate carcinogens. He hopes missileers understand that people were building those facilities in the 1960s "in good faith" with what turned out to be toxic substances.

He said the job implicitly requires risk.

"I'm not saying there's an acceptable level that we have now, but I'm just saying that we come into this wearing the uniform, knowing that sometimes we're in an environment where risk is," Nelson added. "That's what you do in order to get the mission done. ... I'm not looking for a job with zero risk."

Grappling with Grief, Fighting for Benefits
Many missileers who have been diagnosed with cancer have had difficulties applying for and receiving VA benefits. This is due, in part, to a large number of them not believing they were eligible. Some have been told their illness or injury was not connected to service or that their diagnosis occurred long after separation.

Under the passage of the 2022 PACT Act, millions of sick veterans obtained health care and disability compensation for a variety of environmental exposures abroad. It was one of the largest expansions of VA benefits in the history of the agency.

But that act didn't cover compensation for most toxic exposures within the U.S. beyond health care, leaving these missileers behind.

As a newlywed stationed at Malmstrom, Jenny Holmes watched her husband Mark pull dozens of alerts in the missile fields, never speaking of his experiences, problems or frustrations.

She remembers him once saying, "The job is awful," but he didn't go into detail about it. She remembers him stripping out of his flight suit after he'd been underground for 24 hours on alert, shedding the uniform, which smelled strongly of chemicals, in the garage and running into the house to shower and put on fresh, clean clothes.

She remembers him believing deeply in the mission and wanting to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was also a missileer.

She remembers in 2018 when her husband was struggling with deep fatigue and started to have night sweats and some weight loss. In 2019, she saw his eyes turn yellow and learned that his liver, spleen, gallbladder and lymph system on his right side were all covered in cancer. Mark was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

He began losing weight, losing his ability to focus, losing his ability to be the active dad for their three children. On May 12, 2020, after 16 months of treatment, he died at the age of 37 -- 30 years younger than the average patient diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

"Our children have lost an incredible dad, a dad who read them bedtime stories and snuggled with them. He chased them for hours," Jenny Holmes told Military.com in an interview at her home in Colorado Springs. "But more importantly, they lost a future of making memories with him."

Since 2021, 10 months after his death, Jenny Holmes has been grappling with her grief and fighting with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has repeatedly denied death benefits related to her husband because, at the time of his diagnosis, he was a reservist who was not on active orders.

She has been trying to secure compensation for his death, as well as expanded GI Bill education benefits for her family, which would offer her peace of mind and financial security as she raises their children alone.

She and Mark's father, Dan Holmes, have emailed lawmakers, spent countless hours on the phone, and worked tirelessly to share their story.

"With all that Jenny has gone through, her claim with the VA to get the benefits for her and their three kids that they deserve is an unnecessarily painful and more than frustrating process, and has gone on for over a year now," Dan Holmes, a retired lieutenant colonel and former missileer himself, told Military.com in an email.

A few former missileers have had success after advocating for VA benefits connected to possible toxic exposure during their service.

One of them is a former missile combat crew commander at Malmstrom named Jackie. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2018 at age 42.

In 2020, after a long fight, Jackie was able to secure benefits, in part, because she held onto a copy of Air Force Form 55, the Employee Safety and Health Record she signed in 2001, which warned her about exposure to chemicals, fuels, rodents, asbestos, PCBs and lead, among other contaminants.

"Navigating the VA claims processes, especially 12 years after military separation, is not for the faint of heart," Jackie wrote on Torchlight's website.

Jenny Holmes is grateful that a community like Torchlight exists, not just to help support her through her grief and the complicated VA benefits process, but also to spread awareness to current and former missileers.

But, if she had her way, and if the Air Force had paid attention to past warnings and concerns, Jenny Holmes believes a support system like that would have never been necessary in the first place.

"With all of that said, I do believe this community could have been prevented," she told Military.com. "While it is a blessing, I wish I wouldn't have to be part of it, and I certainly don't want any more members."

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Fri Mar 22, 2024 4:23 am

Air Force Missile Base Personnel Have Elevated Breast, Prostate Cancer Rates, Initial Study Results Indicate
By Thomas Novelly
March 13, 2024

The Air Force has found some elevated rates of cancer among missileers, maintainers and other job positions responsible for handling U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to early and inconclusive results from a wide-ranging health study.

The early results, shared by the service and reported for the first time here, indicate elevated rates of breast and prostate cancers, but Air Force officials said more data and information is still needed before drawing conclusions. The service offered a glimpse into the initial findings of the ongoing study -- triggered by reports of high cancer rates among missileers -- when Air Force Global Strike Command briefed airmen on Feb. 23.

Missileers have suspected for years that work in ICBM facilities was causing cancer among airmen, and a grassroots effort recently began tracking and reporting the cases. The Air Force largely ignored the issue for the past two decades following assessments that downplayed any risk at the facilities, but it reversed course last year as cancer cases were made public by ordering the study and cleanup efforts at missile bases.

"We are seeing in the data that breast and prostate cancers may be trending toward an increased incidence in the missile community, which mirrors some other nationally published data reviewing cancer incidents in the U.S. military more broadly," Charles Hoffman, an Air Force Global Strike Command spokesman, said in a statement.

The study is examining cancer rates among missileers, security forces, maintainers, facility managers and other career fields that may be at risk from exposure to carcinogens and toxins.

So far, the research has only looked at Defense Department records. The current phase of the study did not include data from Department of Veterans Affairs medical records, the DoD cancer registry or the VA cancer registry, according to an Air Force Global Strike Command memo.

It "captures fewer than 25% of total cancer cases" that will likely be found by the study, the memo said.

The initial data includes Department of Defense medical records from 2001 to the present, accounting for more than 2 million individuals. Of that number, officials found data covering roughly 84,000 missile community members, including 8,000 missileers.

It "is a limited slice of our population of interest," Air Force officials said, adding "notably, it does not capture cases seen outside the military system."

The data set used for the initial findings found 198 cancer cases in the missile community, including 13 cases of female breast cancer, 24 cases of prostate cancer and 23 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in that cohort.

Military.com conducted a monthslong investigation into cancer among missileers that included government record requests, a two-day site visit to one of the nation's nuclear missile bases, and dozens of interviews with current and former Air Force missileers, as well as the relatives of some who have passed away.

That investigation found the U.S. government has overlooked evidence of cancer clusters for years. Two separate small studies of missileer cancer clusters in the early 2000s failed to recognize the growing problem in the community, with that lack of recognition making it difficult for some missileers to prove to the Department of Veterans Affairs that their illnesses were related to military service, a precursor to securing some benefits.

The military branches also appear to have failed to account properly for contaminants that have been linked to cancer for decades, particularly PCBs, which were detected last year at unsafe levels in some missile facilities during an initial round of environmental sampling.

Anecdotally, former missileers have been vocal about seemingly elevated rates of a variety of cancers, but particularly blood cancers such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

As of February, the nonprofit Torchlight Initiative, a grassroots organization of former missile community members, found that 87 -- or about 25% -- of the 347 registered cancer cases in their registry were blood cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma. By comparison, 10% of cancer diagnoses in the U.S. are blood cancers, according to a fact sheet from Yale Medicine, the Ivy League university's medical school.

However, Air Force officials said that based on the limited findings, "we are not observing any increased rates of [non-Hodgkin lymphoma]" but added that more data is needed.

Many missileers who have been diagnosed with cancer have had difficulties applying for and receiving VA benefits. That is due, in part, to a large number of them not believing they were eligible. Some have been told their illness or injury was not connected to service or that their diagnosis occurred outside the military system with a private practice doctor long after separation.

"What is important to understand is that the epidemiology study is still nascent but progressing to eventually deliver responsible data to draw conclusions from at the end of the study," Hoffman said in an emailed statement. "We are not making assumptions based on these first results to keep integrity with the full epidemiology study."

Meanwhile, airmen were also told about a variety of policy changes during the Air Force Global Strike Command briefing last month. Service officials also shared findings from an additional round of environmental health studies examining exposure of a wide range of contaminants, such as asbestos, radon and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, at the nation's nuclear missile bases.

One of those changes will be to the maintainers and missileers manuals and technical orders, updating and explaining how to deal with toxins as well as how bases clean for carcinogens.

Air Force Global Strike Command Surgeon General Col. Gregory Coleman said "the next steps include creating standard PCB response procedures for any areas of concerns that may be identified in the future, establishing or updating Maintenance Technical Orders (TOs), establishing or updating bioenvironmental response checklists, establishing or updating Civil Engineering (CE) manuals, and refining Launch Facility (LF) sampling plans," according to a statement.

Last month's town hall also revealed the findings from a second round of environmental testing, comprising 2,400 additional samples at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

"All air, water and soil samples were below laboratory limits of detection or were within acceptable regulatory levels for any chemicals or hazards," Coleman said in a prepared statement to Military.com.

Missile Procedures Trainers, the devices that missileers use to learn and practice their mission, were also sampled at each base during the newest round of testing, and PCBs were not detected.

Notably, the Missile Alert Facilities where many PCBs were detected during last year's initial sampling were "not re-sampled as the persistent nature of PCBs does not change seasonally and cleaning efforts are still underway," Air Force Global Strike Command officials said in their presentation.

Air Force officials said Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, which does rocket launches and missile tests, is also being reexamined. In mid-February, air, water, radon and PCB sampling was done, and those results are currently being analyzed.

Launch facilities, called LFs, the underground areas where the ICBMs are held, are also being sampled at Vandenberg, which could "help inform further LF testing" at the missile wings, officials said in the presentation.

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Fri Mar 22, 2024 4:25 am

Nearly 200 cancer cases surface among missileers in Air Force study
By Courtney Mabeus-Brown
March 13, 2024

Early data in a sweeping study of potential cancers in the Air Force’s nuclear missile community revealed fewer cases of most forms of the disease than expected, the service said Wednesday. But it cautioned a deeper dive is necessary before drawing any conclusions.

The first phase of the Air Force’s analysis, which analyzed the electronic medical records of more than 2.2 million airmen who were treated at military medical facilities from 2001 to 2021, revealed 198 cancer cases among the missile community and 5,063 cases across the Air Force at large, according to data provided to reporters in early March.

Officials had expected to find a total of 800 cancer cases among the missile community, according to an Air Force memo written by Col. Tory Woodard, commander of the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, which is running the study.

Based on National Cancer Institute data, officials expected to find 81 instances of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but instead found 23. Their findings suggested only two cancers, breast and prostate, could be disproportionately affecting the missile community, at 13 and 24 cases, respectively. Those working on the study had expected to find 13 cases of breast cancer and 19 diagnoses of prostate cancer.

The millions of medical records reviewed in the first round include 84,000 people with ties to the missile community — like cooks, maintainers, security forces and others — as well as 8,000 missileers.

The Air Force will begin reviewing additional data sets from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, including cancer registries, this spring as the service considers whether cancers, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, are disproportionately sickening missileers and other troops who work at the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missile bases.

Air Force Global Strike Command boss Gen. Thomas Bussiere directed the review more than a year ago after a military brief surfaced indicating that at least nine missileers — officers who serve underground to operate the nation’s silo-based nuclear missiles — had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer, after serving at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana.

The review expanded to include the entire missile community last year. The study began by testing chemical contamination levels in the air, water, surfaces and soil at Malmstrom; F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming; and Minot AFB, North Dakota, which together operate 450 silos that launch the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. It will also include Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, where unarmed missiles are tested.

As stories of missileers being diagnosed with cancer have emerged, the Torchlight Initiative launched to advocate for the airmen and to share their stories. The organization, which has compiled its own database of cancer cases, had found 410 self-reported cancer diagnoses among troops and family members as of Jan. 10. The numbers include 51 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, 22 of which were reported from Malmstrom.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma accounts for 4% of cancer cases in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society, which estimates more than 80,000 people will be diagnosed with the illness in 2024. Of those, more than 20,000 will die.

The Air Force cautioned that its initial data set may only capture 25% of total cancer cases, and the service said it did not know if the breast and prostate figures could be the result of exposure to carcinogens or of better access to medical care and screenings.

The Air Force said it is still trying to determine the size of the missileer community over time, and wants to include that data, if it’s available. Jim Warner, a retired colonel who now leads the Association of Air Force Missileers, estimated that around 22,000 people have directly operated the Minuteman program, which dates back to the early 1960s.

Warner said his organization has spread the word about the Air Force’s study through its newsletters and social media, adding the study may overlook many former airmen who haven’t received care through the military medical system or VA facilities since they left the service. He also wants the Air Force to expand its study to include deactivated Minuteman wings at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota; Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota; and Whiteman AFB, Montana.

While the data may never offer a clear view of cancer rates, Warner argued that including the entire missile community may dilute the overall picture, and could make it more difficult for missileers seeking treatment to prove a service connection to the VA.

“My gut is telling me that if you really limited this study to Malmstrom Air Force Base, I think your numbers would be alarmingly high,” Warner said. “If you add in the entire missile community, I think you’re diluting the results, and you’re going to find that it’s not that significant.”

The study’s next phase will include VA medical records dating from 1991 to 2021, as well as an analysis of DOD and VA cancer registries dating back to 1976, which the Air Force says may help form a more complete picture.

Additional reviews of death indexes, and a registry including cancer data from 45 states and U.S. territories, are expected to follow.

Environmental sampling
As the Air Force releases its first round of cancer analysis, it has also completed a second round of seasonal environmental sampling that included more than 70,000 data points as it searched for carcinogens at missile sites. That includes looking for polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a chemical class that was used in oils, electrical components, and more until it was banned more than four decades ago.

The second round revealed no major findings, and all results were either below laboratory limits of detection or within acceptable limits set by the federal government.

That included 108 surface swipe and six air samples taken from missile procedure trainers, or consoles modeled after launch control centers, the Air Force said. The service did not repeat its PCB swipe samples within launch control centers because levels aren’t expected to fluctuate seasonally, and some are already undergoing remediation after tests last year showed two missile alert facilities at Malmstrom and one at Minot were contaminated above thresholds set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Two of those facilities have been cleaned below EPA limits and reopened, the Air Force said, while mitigation efforts at a third are still underway. The Air Force declined to say which of those three is still being cleaned.

The second round of tests included more than 2,400 samples taken at Minot, Malmstrom and F.E. Warren in November. Results from tests at Vandenberg, which included PCB sampling in launch facilities, were taken in mid-February. Any results that raise concern will be expedited, the Air Force said. A third round of testing is planned for the April-May time frame.

As a result of the elevated PCB levels, the Air Force said it has established a recurring PCB-cleaning contract of its launch control centers and next steps include creating response procedures for contaminated areas identified in the future. Other next steps include establishing or updating maintenance technical orders, bioenvironmental response checklists and civil engineering manuals, and refining sampling plans for launch facilities. Additional deep cleaning, separate from PCB cleaning, will be done to improve conditions for the airmen who live and work around the clock at missile sites.

“Your safety and health are still my priority,” Bussiere said during a virtual town hall with current and former missile community members Feb. 23. “My leadership team, our Air Force leaders and I take the responsibility to protect airman and guardians extremely seriously. I vow to maintain an open dialogue with you, your families, and the missile community past and present throughout this process.”

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Mon Apr 08, 2024 5:56 am

Stored B-1B Regenerated To Replace Damaged Bomber
April 4, 2024
By Stefano D'Urso

The aircraft, stored at AMARG’s “Boneyard” for years, will return to Dyess AFB later this year.

On April 20, 2022, a B-1B Lancer bomber of the 7th Bomb Wing, serial 85-0089, experienced a catastrophic engine failure and fire on the #1 engine while undergoing maintenance on the main ramp at Dyess AFB, Texas. On February 8, 2024, work started on a BONE (as the B-1s are nicknamed within the pilot community) that will replace the damaged one later this year.

The aircraft might be one of the 17 B-1Bs that were retired in 2021, as Air Force Global Strike Command noted at the time that four of them would be maintained “in a reclaimable condition”. Since then, the bomber has been stored in the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group’s “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

This B-1B recently left the “Boneyard” and landed at Tinker AFB for heavy restoration and maintenance. After numerous inspections and upgrades, the aircraft will join the Dyess fleet later this year, marking the first time in 20 years that a BONE will be put back in service after being retired. The last time was when the Air Force retired 33 B-1s in 2003 and returned seven of them to service the next year.

“The fact that our Air Force can call up an aircraft that has sat dormant for several years and prepare it to support our long-range strike mission, all within a year, is incredible,” said Col. Seth Spanier, 7th Bomb Wing commander. “This entire effort speaks to our unwavering commitment to maintaining a combat-credible strike force.”

The catastrophic engine failure
Mechanics with the 7th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Dyess AFB were working on aircraft 85-0089 to perform routine corrective maintenance on the #1 engine variable area exhaust nozzle. During the engine’s run-up to maximum augmenter to verify the correct functioning of the system, the engine catastrophically failed.

The investigation found out that the incident was caused by high cycle fatigue which initiated a crack on the surface of the 2nd stage fan disk, which then propagated and then ultimately caused the disk to break apart. The failure caused the disk to be ejected from the intake section, severing the fuel lines and causing a fire. The fan disk landed over 500 ft from the aircraft, while debris struck one Airmen who suffered minor injuries.

Starting in October 2023, Dyess and Tinker AFB maintenance teams began to demilitarize the damaged B-1B and, following an aircraft wash, maintenance personnel prepared the aircraft to salvage 49 parts valued at over $2.7 million. Damage caused by the mishap was worth about $15 million, according to the investigation report.

Salvageable parts were transported to squadrons at Dyess AFB for training purposes. The left wing and left nacelle were transported to the 436th Training Squadron crash lab, the only crash lab in Air Combat Command, to support their aircraft mishap investigation course. The fuselage was recently transported to the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University, Kansas, to facilitate the forward intermediate fuselage super panel prototype, mentioned the Air Force.

“This is an example of our team thriving despite some initial adversity,” said Col. Joshua Pope, 7th Maintenance Group commander. “The demilitarization project facilitated proactive inspections and the repair of structural components by personnel, reducing repair costs, timelines, and the impact on aircraft availability, all while upholding fleet safety.”

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Mon Apr 08, 2024 6:02 am

New Air Force combat wings could deploy in 2 years
By Audrey Decker
March 28, 2024

The U.S. Air Force is planning to deploy its new “mission-ready” combat wings as soon as two years from now—as it carries out a massive overhaul to prepare for a fight in the Pacific.

The Air Force announced in February that it wants to restructure its wings so they train and deploy together. But before it can actually deploy the new structure, it needs ample time to practice, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said during Defense One’s State of Defense series.

“We need to give them the time to have that training curriculum, to have the collective training, to have the certification, and then be able to go and deploy together,” Allvin said. An Air Force spokesperson later said these new combat wings wouldn’t be ready to deploy sooner than 2026.

This model is different from the way the service has operated in the past—deploying forces one squadron at a time and taking people and aircraft from various units throughout the service to meet in theater.

“We don't have a whole wing that picks up and trains together and understands each other in the deployed environment,” and that won’t work if the service has to be ready to fight “in very short order,” Allvin said.

The Air Force will start to identify which units will be the “deployable combat wings” in the coming months, and after they’re identified, they’ll start training together, he said.

“We are reorienting our wings to be able to train together as units in the environment practicing agile combat employment. That's where I think the airmen will really see it earliest, is when they start seeing [that] they’re training with the same units that they're going to deploy with, rather than meeting them up over in the theater,” Allvin said.

The restructuring of wings is one of many changes the service announced as part of an effort called “Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition.” The reorganization will be the most significant changes to the Air Force’s current structure in decades, as the service pivots away from the way it deployed forces to the Middle East to get ready for a bigger fight against China.

The service must start moving and be able to adjust on the fly, even though it might make some uncomfortable, Allvin said. There’s a “little angst” and confusion from Congress about the changes the Air Force is making, he said, so maintaining communication about the effort is crucial.

Lawmakers included language in the 2024 defense bill about the reoptimization effort, writing that the service hasn’t completely explained to Congress why the changes are necessary and what funds would be required to make those changes.

“We need to continue that communication and let them know that we may not know the exact heading of our destination, but we know plus/minus 15 degrees, and we're going to move out to get there. And those things will evolve, but we want to make sure we have the communication along the way. And when we start doing it within the next year or so, people will understand how we're doing it and why we're doing it,” Allvin said.

The service didn’t request funding in the fiscal 2024 or 2025 budget request for the reoptimization effort, but did include a few items on its “unfunded priorities list”—items the service didn’t fit into its $188.1 billion 2025 budget request—to help accelerate the reoptimization plan. This includes money for more exercises in the Pacific to practice the new deployment method and money to “reoptimize” the fighter force by buying parts and equipment to create nine new deployable “mission generation force elements.”

These “MGFEs” will provide combatant commanders with more options, Allvin said, because the same number of fighters can go to multiple locations with more sets of spare parts and kits.

“That's all this really is—readiness spare kits that allow you to take the same number of fighters, go to different places, and be able to operate from different places,” he said.

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Mon Apr 08, 2024 6:04 am

Minihan: New Mobility Systems Needed to Go with New Fighters and Bombers
March 29, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The ongoing “re-optimization” of the Air Force will ensure that mobility isn’t left behind as new fighters and bombers come into being, Air Mobility Command boss Gen. Michael Minihan said March 28. New kinds of airlifters and tankers with varying degrees of stealth will be needed to complement the shooters, he said, and USAF’s new requirements organizations will advance the various elements of the force together.

Speaking on a Defense One webinar, Minihan said the service’s new Integrated Capabilities Command—one of the principal new organizations announced as part of the re-optimization—will ensure the entire force is crafted to fit together.

“I was not overwhelmed with the roles that I had when it comes to developing the force of the future,” he said. “But the integration needed at the higher level … is absolutely something that needs to be addressed aggressively.”

In the 1950s, Minihan noted, the B-52 was developed in parallel with the KC-135, on which it depended, to complete the strategic mission “as a system.”

Now, “we tend to think of the mobility platforms as an afterthought when it comes to the next generation of fighters and bombers,” Minihan said. As a result, airlift and tanker platforms now significantly trail fighters and bombers in sophistication.

With Integrated Capabilities Command, “I think that ‘integration’ is going to be the key word of those three. The most important is that we integrate together,” Minihan said. Fighters, bombers, tankers, mobility, and weapons must be developed “as a system moving forward,” he said.

AMC will contribute experts to the new command to aid the process, Minihan said.

“I’m very grateful that this is being stood up and I think that we’re going to depart sharply from the status quo that has mismanaged the integration and we’re going to get to a higher place in a very good way,” Minihan said.

Meanwhile, AMC will maintain its strong operational focus, Minihan said, working hand-in-glove with Transportation Command, Strategic Command and Northern Command.

Minihan acknowledged that much of the airlift fleet “is old,” but demand from combatant commanders has not slowed. As a result, the fleet needs new platform investment.

“I want to put a team on the field that’s ready to handle the full spectrum of operations that may come our way,” Minihan said.

But “it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ approach,” he added.

Part of the fleet can operate in uncontested environments, while another piece will need to function in what Minihan called “semi-permissive” areas where “there could be everything from a low to medium threat, perhaps, to no threat.”

Finally, “we’ve got to have a fleet that can go into the high weapons engagement zone that has an enormous amount of risk,” he said.

Airlifters can shoot palletized munitions like the AGM-158 JASSM-ER, or launch decoys en masse, he said. They could also launch smaller aircraft to send a life raft to a downed Airman or a radio battery to ground troops, among other actions.

“If we take advantage of an effects-bases [mindset] instead of a platform-based, I think we’ll develop a very aggressive, highly integrated systems approach to supporting the Joint Force,” he said.

It’s too early to say how many stealthy and non-stealthy future aircraft are needed, Minihan said. It’s “important that that we look at the systems approach much more broadly than just the threat,” he noted.

However, “I believe the majority will be in the medium range that can go both ways.” Some of those aircraft of the future “look very close to what we do now.”

The Air Force plans to buy about 75 tankers to recapitalize its KC-135 fleet and keep air refueling aircraft in production until the Next-Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS)—a low-observable refueler—arrives in the mid-to-late 2030s. The tanker could be the Boeing KC-46 already in production, or another type, such as the A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport being offered by Airbus.

Beyond that, however, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said the service can no longer rely on “tube and wing”-type airlifters and tankers based on commercial aircraft.

Tankers in or near the battlespace “will be smaller fleets that have higher capabilities and have qualities that give them success,” Minihan said. They won’t necessarily have the same degree of stealth as fighters and bombers, “but I’m looking for low observable qualities,” as well as vertical takeoff and landing qualities.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s an exact mimic of what the what the fighters and the bombers look like,” he added.

Minihan reiterated his goal of outfitting 25 percent of the mobility enterprise with connectivity upgrades for the entire joint force by 2025.

“That’s about 250 airplanes,” but it’s also mobility headquarters and air operations centers, air mobility operations wings and contingency response units, he said.

“So I’m looking at the total enterprise when it comes to the 25 by ‘25,” Minihan said.

There’s “a lot of real estate” on AMC’s aircraft “that could do so much more than tanking and lift.” Minihan envisions tankers and airlifters functioning as communications relays and internet providers in the battlespace, with minimal changes to the aircraft and low-cost technology.

“This is not about Air Mobility Command,” he said. “This is about supporting the joint team first. And this is about supporting partners and allies second, so the best way we do that is connectivity.”

Such changes are likely to be deployed across the board, so AMC can “see what works best” before deciding where to invest more, he added.

“I’m willing to take risk here, because the risk of the status quo is not acceptable,” Minihan said. “And we’ve proven that both in real world operations [and] exercises that we’ve completed over the last two and a half years.”

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Mon Apr 08, 2024 6:08 am

Air Force Overhaul Plan that Brings Back Warrant Officers Draws Scrutiny from Capitol Hill
By Rebecca Kheel and Thomas Novelly
March 25, 2024

The Air Force's much ballyhooed plan to restructure its forces to better compete with China is facing congressional scrutiny.

A bipartisan agreement to fund the Pentagon for the remainder of this fiscal year that was approved by Congress early Saturday morning included a demand from lawmakers for more answers from the Air Force about its proposed reorganization.

Specifically, in the report accompanying the Pentagon spending bill, lawmakers called on the Air Force to answer an array of questions before it spends any money on the reorganization effort and directed the Government Accountability Office to study the proposal. While bill reports are technically non-binding -- meaning they don't have the force of law -- defense officials typically abide by them.

"To date, the Department of the Air Force has not provided thorough justification for this reorganization, a comprehensive implementation plan or detailed budgetary information necessary for the subcommittees to assess this plan," the report said, referring to the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees in charge of Pentagon spending.

In one of the most sweeping changes in their history, Air Force and Space Force officials announced last month at the Air and Space Forces Association's Warfare Symposium on Feb. 12 that they are renaming, reorganizing and rethinking their services' structures so airmen and Guardians can be ready for competition with China.

The announced changes included bringing back warrant officers for cyber jobs -- a plan first reported by Military.com -- as well as changes to training, and renaming and reorganizing many of the structures of the Department of the Air Force, which Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said is necessary as China prepares for war in the Pacific and, potentially, against the U.S. military.

Overall, 24 different changes were unveiled: 16 for the Air Force, five for the Space Force and three for the entire Department of the Air Force.

Some of the changes announced were specific and short-term goals aimed to happen within a year, while a majority were vague renaming and rebranding efforts aimed at "great power competition," Defense Department terms for escalating defense spending, operational strategy and overall resources against other nation-state adversaries.

The congressional report designates funding for the reorganization as a "congressional special interest item," meaning lawmakers are asking for any effort by the Air Force to shuffle around its fiscal 2024 funding to pay for the reorganization to trigger a notification to Congress so relevant committees can give their approval before the funding is moved.

The notification should answer how the changes differ from the Air Force structure right now; what each phase of the plan is and the cost estimates for each phase; whether new offices will need to be set up with a strategic basing process; how the changes will affect military and civilian jobs, broken down by location; and whether moving the money affects other Air Force programs, according to the bill report.

Department of the Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek did not directly respond to Military.com questions Monday asking whether the service planned to reprogram any fiscal 2024 funds for the reorganization plan, if it needs congressional approval to go ahead with the plans, or if it changes the implementation of the new warrant officer program.

"As the Department of the Air Force develops implementation plans, leaders will continue to share information with congressional staffs," Stefanek said in an emailed statement Monday.

Kendall said last month when announcing the reorganization that most of the changes are being done within the existing structures and were created to "minimize cost," adding that there's nothing in the 2024 or 2025 budget right now to assist with the new strategies and offices.

"We have nothing in the '24 or '25 budget for any of these changes," he said at AFA last month. "There's a possibility that we'll have some funds in '26."

In addition to requesting answers from the Air Force, the bill report also directs the Government Accountability Office, which is essentially Congress' in-house nonpartisan watchdog, to study the planned reorganization.

The GAO investigation should take 180 days and look at, among other factors, cost estimates; how long it will take to implement the plan; what success will be defined as; whether feedback from combatant commanders was considered; and how the reorganization could affect joint and coalition forces, the report said.

While relatively low on the menu of actions Congress could take to dial up pressure on the Air Force or pump the brakes on the plan, the bill report signals that lawmakers in both parties have outstanding questions about what would be one of the most significant overhauls of Air Force structure in the service's history.

The reorganization has already received some criticism, namely in response to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin stating that the plan is "not best optimized" for the Middle East, Military.com reported.

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Fri Apr 12, 2024 4:34 am

Air Force’s first Grey Wolf patrol helicopter arrives at Malmstrom
By Rachel S. Cohen
15 March 2024

The Air Force’s newest helicopter has reported for duty.

The first field-ready MH-139 Grey Wolf arrived at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base earlier this month, marking the start of operations for a new fleet of aircraft designed to safeguard America’s land-based nuclear missiles.

The Grey Wolf will be used to patrol the intercontinental ballistic missile fields at Malmstrom; F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming; and Minot AFB, North Dakota. It replaces the UH-1N Hueys that entered service in 1970.

The 341st Missile Wing filmed Malmstrom’s first Grey Wolf touching down on base March 5. Officials from Air Force Global Strike Command, which manages the service’s nuclear enterprise, and the helicopter community celebrated the milestone at a March 9 ceremony.

“Today we begin a new era in ICBM security,” 582nd Helicopter Group Commander Col. Philip Bryant said at the Malmstrom event.

“You will convert from the Huey to the Grey Wolf at a rapid pace. … You will not have the luxury to pause the mission,” he told airmen. “Embrace that challenge. You have an opportunity that few Air Force aviators and few defenders receive, so make the most of it.”

Bringing on the MH-139 is one piece of the Air Force’s multibillion-dollar modernizations of its nuclear weapons, the aircraft that carry them and the assets to safeguard them.

The Air Force says the Grey Wolf can cruise 50% faster and farther than the Huey, with a 30% larger cabin and the ability to lift an additional 5,000 pounds.

Airmen received the initial test airframe in 2019; the service activated its Grey Wolf training unit at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, in January.

Though the service had originally planned to purchase as many as 84 helicopters from Boeing under a $2.4 billion production contract, it now expects to drastically shrink that buy to 36 operational airframes.

According to Air Force budget documents, the service has enough money for 42 helicopters, training devices and other support equipment. Six of those are test airframes that have already been delivered.

Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s civilian acquisition chief, told reporters March 12 that while the service plans to replace the nuclear enterprise’s helicopters, it will no longer use them for secondary missions like VIP transport and search-and-rescue operations.

The cut means Joint Base Andrews, Maryland; Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington; and Yokota Air Base, Japan, will go without helicopters once their Hueys are retired.

“We had anticipated also fielding to replace aircraft in other locations not associated with Global Strike,” Hunter said, according to Breaking Defense. “Those we will not be able to replace.”

USAF Slashes Plans for MH-139 Helicopter Fleet Size, Locations
March 15, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force is dramatically scaling back its plans for the MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopter, cutting its projected fleet from 80 to 42 aircraft and reducing the number of bases that will host the new chopper.

For now, that means some units will continue to operate the aging UN-1N Huey, some of which have been flying since the Vietnam War.

The Air Force’s original plan was to procure 84 helicopters to provide security and transport across sprawling ICBM fields, senior leader and executive airlift in the National Capital Region, and aircrew survival training.

That plan was later trimmed to 80 aircraft, and the service’s 2025 budget documents now show a cut all the way down to 36. However, an Air Force spokeswoman told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the program of record would actually be 42 helicopters since six test aircraft were already delivered.

To accomplish such a reduction, the Air Force has decided to only field the MH-139 at its three ICBM bases:

* F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.
* Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.
* Minot Air Force Base, N.D.

All three bases will still get their originally planned 11 helicopters, added the spokeswoman. Malmstrom just recently received its first MH-139, welcoming the Grey Wolf on March 9. It is slated to receive its full complement by the summer of 2025.

In addition, the MH-139 schoolhouse will still be at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., which is slated to get its first chopper this month.

Previously planned locations Joint Base Andrews, Md.; Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash.; and Yokota Air Base, Japan, will all not receive any MH-139s now. The Air Force had already announced Andrews as the fourth location to get the Grey Wolf, with a projected fleet size of 25.

The cuts to the program came “due to fiscal pressures and considering remaining service life of the UH-1N Huey,” the spokeswoman said.

However, budget documents note that the UH-1N Huey helicopters “have significant capability gaps in the areas of speed, range, endurance, payload capacity, and aircraft self-protection.”

The MH-139, a joint venture with Boeing and Leonardo, is a militarized version of the AW139 helicopter that is capable of flying faster, higher, farther, and with more weight than the UH-1N. The program has had hiccups, though—issues with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification caused the Air Force to delay its fiscal 2021 purchase of eight helicopters and skip its 2022 buys completely. Even after it gained FAA certification, the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) warned in its annual report that the Grey Wolf might fall shore of “operational effectiveness requirements.” The report noted concerns about with the automatic flight control system, sensor display, intercom system, cabin layout, and “restrictions on takeoffs in crosswinds or near obstacles.”

The 2023 edition of the report similarly warned that the program “faces several ongoing risks to … meeting operational effectiveness, suitability, and survivability requirements.” While some progress has been made, the report authors noted that the MH-139 still requires some FAA certifications to start initial operational testing, which are not projected to be approved until the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024.

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

Despite all this, the Air Force wants to keep production high now and cut the program on the back end—the service is maintaining its request for eight helicopters in fiscal 2025, then dropping to two each for the next four years to fill out the fleet. In its 2024 budget request, USAF projected a high buy of 15 helicopters in 2026, with smaller declines after that.

Air Force officials have noted that their procurement and research and development budgets took hits in the 2025 request due to spending caps set under the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the need to maintain operations and personnel accounts. The service is also curtailing its planned F-15EX and T-7 programs of record, though by far smaller amounts, and trimming its near-term procurement of F-35s.

The MH-139, however, is taking the biggest cut. In terms of procurement, the move reduces the program’s estimated budget from $2.55 billion to $1.42 billion. It does, however, raise the unit cost per helicopter from $34.47 million to $39.37 million. That rise of 14.2 percent puts the program very close to a Nunn-McCurdy breach—the law requires Congress be notified of any program that has its unit cost rise 15 percent above current estimates.

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 7:56 pm

The Air Force is quietly revolutionizing parts replacement
By Patrick Tucker - Defense One
April 2, 2024

The U.S. military spends billions on replacement parts for aircraft each year, with the Air Force requesting $1.5 billion for parts in the next fiscal year alone. Now, officials at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, working with a startup called Machina Labs, say they’ve found a robotic AI-driven solution to those high costs. And the new technique could also significantly shorten the supply chain, allowing replacement to happen closer to the front lines.

Machina Labs’s solution is called the Robotic Craftsman. The technique applies artificial intelligence to the job of crafting shapes into metal with human precision, and then uses robotic arms to fold the metal into place.

“It's not that we're just deploying robots to old technology. It's a completely new technology developed from scratch.” Edward Mehr, one of the co-founders of Machina Labs, told Defense One.

The Warner Robins Air Logistics Center has had one of the systems at its depot since November. Shane Groves, a subject matter expert at the center, told Defense One that the system has helped them take six months off the time it takes to get a part.

And, he said, it’s a lot easier to maintain than the traditional system, which has a lot of difficult-to-replace components.

“Not only are they aging, but the pumps and the valves and bladders that are used are very maintenance prone and require a significant amount of upkeep. The amount of infrastructure needed and the amount of space needed to replicate the same functionality [with the Robotic Craftsman] is much less,” he said. The parts themselves are “three times more affordable.”

Beyond parts repair, Mehr hopes rapid manufacturing could play a big role in one of the Pentagon’s newest projects, the mass production of tens of thousands of low-cost drones, dubbed Replicator. He said he’s talking to integrators as well as the people in the Defense Department about it.

“The angle we're taking is around the speed of delivery and manufacturing…Let's say if you're making 14 different versions of drones, then you have to make 14 different manufacturing lines. And if you use traditional manufacturing techniques, that means we need to have 15, 16 different versions of the production line,” as opposed to one production line that adapts to different needs, he said.

In terms of the military’s future needs, the system’s most important asset may be its small size, with the current version able to fit on the back of a truck. A smaller infrastructure footprint could mean not only cost savings, but also allow troops to move repair work—or drone making—much closer to the battlefield. That’s something the Ukrainians have done with great success, and it allows for much more nimble operations as well as decreasing the vulnerability of supply lines. It could be particularly useful in the Pacific, where parts resupply is fraught with logistical and political challenges.

“The first phase for us is just deployment into the depots. We're working on potential deployment into the battlefield. We're working on the next version that's a little bit more hardened,” Mehr said. The hope is to have a battle-hardened version at some point this year

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 7:58 pm

Why USAF’s New T-7 Trainer Won’t Start Production for 2 More Years
April 14, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Boeing T-7 Red Hawk advanced trainer won’t be ready for a low-rate initial production decision until February 2025—six and a half years after Boeing won the initial contract in 2018.

The new date for the “Milestone C” initial production decision is as much as 14 months later than was anticipated as recently as late 2022, caused in part by concerns over the safety of ejection seats. Those and other issues are now or will soon be resolved, the Air Force said.

The first production aircraft will not be delivered until December 2025 at the earliest, USAF said. It is not clear how much the delays will push back initial operational capability (IOC), which was originally scheduled for 2024 and had more recently been promised for 2026.

Regardless, the ripple effect of T-7 delays could force the Air Force to invest in further life-extensions for its 60-year-old T-38 trainers, which the T-7 is supposed to replace. The Air Force continues to fund Pacer Classic III structural modifications for the aircraft, along with avionics upgrades, to the tune of $125.3 million in FY ’24.

The Air Force plans to buy at least 351 T-7A Red Hawks and 46 high-fidelity simulators. USAF’s new “Reforge” fighter pilot training plan could increase that total. Boeing’s contract provides for up to 475 aircraft.

The Air Force and Boeing “are confident improvements and recent testing are yielding a safe and effective escape system” for the T-7, a service spokesperson said.

Last year’s planning documents showed the service spending $321 million on T-7 production in fiscal 2024, but USAF zeroed-out T-7 production funding for fiscal 2024 in its recent budget request.

“Milestone C has moved to February 2025,” so procurement funding “for Low-Rate Initial Production is not needed in FY24,” she said. At Milestone C, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment decides if a program has met its exit criteria from EMD and is ready for production.

Ejection Seat Concerns
A principal cause of delay were concerns noted across more than a dozen ejection seat tests. Air Force officials have said that tests showed Boeing’s escape system exhibiting unsafe deceleration at parachute opening, potentially causing pilots to suffer concussions as their visors tore off. Industry sources suggest, however, that USAF’s crash dummies were improperly instrumented, suggesting inaccurate results. The sources said USAF is revisiting some of those data.

Under the initial 2018 contract, Boeing was to have delivered the first five production aircraft in 2023. Most of those are now complete, but developmental flight testing has been held up by the seat issue and is now anticipated to start in September, the Air Force spokesperson said. Boeing said last week that it expected developmental testing to start “this summer.”

Boeing ran into problems with the seats last year when they didn’t function as expected with pilots at the smallest and lightest end of the range. The T-7 is the first USAF aircraft to be designed from the outset to accommodate pilots in a wide variety of physical sizes. Ejection systems on previous trainers and fighter aircraft could accommodate only a narrow range of physiques and excluded too many potential student pilots, particularly small women.

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said in March budget testimony that recent sled tests with the seats have given confidence that the ejection problems are on the mend.

“Minor changes to seat logic” have “already reduced system risk and increased pilot safety,” the spokesperson explained. Additionally, “the USAF and Boeing are studying the ejection seat performance throughout 2023 to identify additional enhancements, and Boeing will use the results of testing to inform changes needed to qualify the seat as safe for production.”

Supply chain issues have also contributed to T-7 delays, the Air Force said.

“Prior to the FY ’23 President’s Budget,” the Air Force and Boeing “recognized schedule impact to the T-7A ‘Red Hawk’ program partially attributable to developmental discovery and the COVID-19 global pandemic,” the USAF spokesperson said.

In June 2022, USAF and Boeing “began a schedule re-baseline effort to assess the collective impacts of all schedule delays to date, to include…ground [testing], pre-flight testing and hardware qualification challenges; contractor inability to rapidly correct deficiencies; subcontractor initial design delays; three aerodynamic instability discoveries; escape system qualification delays; and supplier critical parts shortages,” she explained.

After an “exhaustive” schedule risk assessment, “the T-7 office program office recommended a new [Milestone C] date of February 2025 and is awaiting final coordination of this change,” the spokesperson said.

The Air Force does not plan to accelerate testing to gain back lost time. The Air Force and Boeing “do not believe the delays can be overcome by more aggressive flight test,” the spokesperson said. The planned flight test schedule “is already success-based and aggressive.”

Boeing has been flying its first two T-7s—”T1” and “T2,” which the Air Force refers to as “production relevant”—at the company’s St. Louis, Mo., facilities, but Air Force pilots are not permitted to fly the pre-EMD jets for testing purposes until the seat and other issues have been resolved.

The first three engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) examples of the T-7 are complete and two further aircraft are in the final stages of construction, USAF said. These five jets “will be enough for flight testing.”

Air Force leaders have pointed to the T-7A as a pathfinder for how major systems will be bought in the future. Boeing and its partner Saab of Sweden managed to go from digital design of the T-7 prototypes to first flight in three years, and the mating of fuselage and wing sections was done with no shimming. The $9 billion T-7 contract was deemed to be about $10 billion below the Air Force’s estimates for the program, and far below Boeing’s competitors in the T-X contest. Company officials said the digital approach made their bid realistic and not a low-ball.

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:02 pm

I'm getting the sense that the US government / DOD is getting more hard nosed with Boeing when it comes to pricing. Which makes me wonder to what degree the defense side of Boeing is subsidizing the commercial side.

Sticker Shock Drags Out USAF’s E-7 Negotiations with Boeing
April 18, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force hopes to nail down a deal with Boeing for the E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and battle management aircraft soon, but negotiations remain bogged down over what the service deems an unreasonably high price for the jet.

The Air Force won’t say what it thinks is a fair cost for the E-7, but in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said a figure of $2.5 billion per airplane is rumored, and neither Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall nor Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin challenged that figure.

A congressional source said the figure came up in pre-testimony office visits and, again, was not refuted by Air Force officials. However, an Air Force official said the figure is “about” what’s being discussed for the engineering and manufacturing development program for the E-7 program.

An Air Force spokesperson said the $2.5 billion per jet figure is “inaccurate,” but declined to comment further.

The E-7s in question would be prototypes, and that cost would not necessarily correlate to the other 24 Wedgetails the Air Force plans to buy.

When asked about progress with the E-7 in the April 16 SASC hearing on the Department of the Air Force’s budget, Kendall said the Air Force is “still moving ahead with the E-7; it’s funded in the ’25 budget.” He added that production of one of the two developmental prototypes has been slipped “a year to the right.”

“The price that we got from the prime came in much higher than we had anticipated,” Kendall said. “We’ve been involved in negotiations trying to get it down. We have come much closer, but we’re not really at closure yet. So, we have some additional work to do there.”

In what Kendall said was an admittedly “optimistic” forecast, the Air Force would “hopefully … get to an agreement very shortly, and then we’ll be able to move on to the program. We’re still committed to the program, but we’ve got to have an affordable aircraft.”

The Air Force plans to buy 26 E-7s to replace the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, which now is more than 40 years old. Allvin said that because of obsolete parts, overall structural fatigue, engine maintenance issues, and age, the aircraft are “starting to divest themselves” and cannot continue to be upgraded. He lauded maintenance Airmen who manage to keep the aircraft flying despite the many mechanical issues.

Kendall said the E-3’s radar is obsolete, and because Chinese long-range missiles would target such key assets early on in a potential conflict, the E-3 and other critical assets like it “are not effective and would die very quickly.” The E-7, with its main active electronically scanned array radar, can operate further away from the heat of the fight, increasing its survivability.

Long-term, Kendall said, the airborne and ground moving-target mission will transition to satellites.

Asked why the E-7 is apparently so costly, Kendall said that it “would have to include all of our communication systems. So, there are a number of modifications from the original E-7, which is several years old, that have to be made to meet our requirements. That’s part of the problem with the cost.”

The E-7 was developed by the Royal Australian Air Force with Boeing, and has also been adopted by the U.K. Royal Air Force. The Republic of Korea Air Force and Turkish Air Force have also signed up to buy it, and NATO is considering the jet to replace its own E-3 fleet.

Mullin—whose state the E-3s are based and fixed at depot—insisted the 16 E-3s the Air Force will retain until the E-7 arrives are too few, adding that “quantity has a quality all its own” and that more aircraft can help blunt Chinese advances.

In response, Allvin retorted that “it’s only good if that quantity can survive. It’s only good if that quantity can be effective.”

Operating in a “highly contested environment, against a peer adversary … more quantities” of less advanced aircraft “might be left in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,” he said.

The Air Force needs to “ensure that those crews can survive; they can execute their mission,” Allvin said. The proposed plan for the E-3 retains “enough for today” while investing in a more credible capability in the near term, he added.

Kendall said the E-3s “just don’t have the resilience or the capability. … We’ve really got to get to the next generation. So keeping airplanes around that are going to be ineffective and essentially very vulnerable to attack in the early stages of conflict … is not putting us in a better position.”

At the AFA Warfare Symposium in February, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said he doesn’t find it “surprising” that Boeing is bargaining hard on the E-7, noting that “they’ve gotten into some contracts in the past”—like the KC-46 taker and T-7 trainer—where “it’s apparent that as they were bidding those, there was key information they were lacking.”

Boeing is more than $7 billion in the red on the KC-46, which is a fixed-price program, and is starting to incur significant losses on the fixed-price T-7, as well. Outgoing Boeing CEO David Calhoun has said the company is resolved to be “more disciplined” in how it bids government contracts.

Boeing is “trying to do their homework and not bid” if “they don’t understand the full scope of the work they’re going to be expected to perform,” Hunter said at the conference.

The sticking point in the negotiations is focused solely on the “prototype aircraft,” Hunter said. Once those are in the configuration the Air Force needs, it wants to “seamlessly transition into a production program under the major capability acquisition pathway.”

Hunter and other officials have said that nonrecurring engineering and cybersecurity are the big E-7 cost items that were not anticipated. Officials have also said the Air Force has offered to defer some capabilities to later upgrades in order to meet a rapid timetable and get the cost to where the service and Boeing can agree.

An Air Force official said in February that although there are other potential solutions to the Air Force’s airborne tracking and battle management requirement, “there isn’t any alternative … when you think about what it would take to match this.”

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:06 pm

Despite the B-21 officially being the "Raider", it would be amusing if future AI fighters pick up an unofficial name of Cylon or Raider.

US Air Force stages dogfights with AI-flown fighter jet
By Stephen Losey
19 April 2024

An experimental fighter jet has squared off against an F-16 in the first-ever artificial intelligence-fueled dogfights, the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said.

And the successful effort to have the X-62A VISTA engage in practice aerial combat could help the Air Force further refine its plans for autonomous drone wingmen known as collaborative combat aircraft, officials told reporters Friday.

VISTA, which stands for Variable In-flight Simulator Aircraft, is a heavily modified F-16 operated by the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The service has used it to test cutting-edge aerospace technology for more than three decades, and in recent years it’s been used to test autonomous flight capabilities.

DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution, or ACE, program has been working for the last four years to refine how the military can use AI for air warfare and build airmen’s trust that autonomous technology can perform safely and reliably in combat.

Until now, the military has used autonomy for aspects of flight that are predictable and based on a set of known rules, such as the Auto Ground Collision Avoidance System that keeps jets such as the F-35 from crashing. But within-visual range dogfighting — perhaps the most dangerous, unpredictable form of flight a pilot can engage in — represented an entirely different set of skills for AI to learn, said Col. James Valpiani, commandant of the Air Force Test Pilot School.

“Dogfighting presents a very important challenge case for the question of trust” in autonomy, Valpiani said. “It’s inherently very dangerous. It’s one of the most difficult competencies that military aviators must master.”

The ACE program started by having AI agents control simulated F-16s while dogfighting in computers. Those AI-operated simulated F-16s went five for five against human pilots, DARPA said in a video posted online. But they weren’t yet trained to follow safety guidelines — including those that keep a pilot from breaking the jet — and other ethical requirements such as combat training rules and weapons engagement zones.

In December 2022 and April 2023, the Air Force and DARPA started actual flight tests with AI agents flying VISTA. And in September 2023, it was time for VISTA to go toe-to-toe with a human pilot.

For two weeks, VISTA flew against an F-16 in a variety of scenarios, including situations where it started at a disadvantage against the human-flown jet. VISTA started off by flying defensively to build up confidence in its flight safety, before switching to intense offensive maneuvers. Valpiani said the jets flew aggressively at speeds of up to 1,200 miles per hour and within 2,000 feet of one another, including carrying out nose-to-nose passes and vertical maneuvering.

Two pilots were in VISTA’s cockpit to monitor its systems and switch between different AI agents to test their performance, but they never had to take over flying. VISTA carried out 21 test flights between December 2022 and September 2023.

Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, DARPA’s ACE program manager, and Valpiani said the AI-flown VISTA performed well and tested a variety of agents with multiple different capabilities. But they declined to say how many times VISTA beat the human-flown F-16.

“The purpose of the test was to demonstrate we can safely test these AI agents in a safety-critical air combat environment,” Hefron said.

Hefron and Valpiani said the ACE program learned multiple lessons from the dogfighting tests, including how to quickly adapt AI software and upload it to the jet, sometime while already in flight.

Hefron said the program next plans to hold more VISTA-versus-F-16 matches to refine the technology and test out different scenarios.

They declined to say whether the ACE program’s dogfighting effort might one day lead to a future fighter fleet without pilots in the cockpit, saying those “long range vision” questions are better suited for Air Force leadership. But Valpiani noted that developments such as Auto-GCAS haven’t replaced pilots’ need to be continually aware of their terrain, and only serve as a backup failsafe.

And the lessons learned from ACE could apply to more than just dogfighting, they said. ACE will allow the service to create uncrewed CCAs that can autonomously fly alongside crewed fighters such as F-35s and the Next-Generation Air Dominance platform, carrying out missions such as airstrikes and reconnaissance operations.

“The X-62A program and DARPA’s ACE program are not primarily about dogfighting,” Hefron said. “They’re really about building trust in responsible AI. The key takeaway from our September event is that we can do that safely, we can do it effectively.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is confident enough in the ACE program’s progress that he plans to soon fly as a passenger in the AI-operated VISTA. DARPA and the Air Force declined to say more specifically when Kendall will fly in VISTA.

“There will be a pilot with me who will just be watching, as I will be, as the autonomous technology works,” Kendall told senators during a budget hearing April 9. “Hopefully neither he or I will be needed to fly the airplane.”

James1978 · Post by **James1978** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:08 pm

Allvin: USAF Sticking to 100 B-21s as It Considers Something New
April 16, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force isn’t looking to buy more than 100 B-21s because it may come up with something better by the time all those aircraft are built, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin told the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 16.

While the B-21 “is the future of our bomber force,” Allvin told the SASC that fresher, more effective technology may appear before the planned B-21 production run is complete, making the Air Force hesitant to commit to any more just yet.

One hundred B-21s “is the program of record,” Allvin said under questioning from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). Northrop Grumman is the B-21 prime contractor.

“I think we’re not going to reach that number until probably the mid-2030s and beyond,” he said. “I think there are other technological advancements that we would see to be able to augment that and have a better mix … before we commit to that as being the platform” that will serve as the backbone of the future bomber force “beyond that.”

The original, 2015 requirement for the B-21 was 80-100 airframes, and it was upgraded to “at least 100” in more recent years. Heads of Global Strike Command and various think tanks have voiced a requirement for as many as 225-250 B-21s, but the Air Force has stuck to 100, as part of a fleet that also includes 75 B-52s and 45 B-1Bs until the early 2030s. The Air Force’s stated goal has been to neck down to just the B-21 and the B-52 as its bomber force.

Allvin did not elaborate on what other technologies the Air Force is considering to “augment” the B-21 force.

His comment that the full B-21 production run of 100 will not be achieved until the mid-to-late 2030s underscores that the bomber won’t be built at a very aggressive rate, suggesting an annual production of less than 10 airframes per year. Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante recently said that the B-21’s production rate was deliberately set at a low level to protect it from budget cuts.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, also testifying before the SASC, said the largely secret B-21 is “moving forward.”

“We’re pretty happy with the progress,” Kendall said. “I’m always very careful about saying positive things about programs and development … they all have risk.

But Kendall did express cautious optimism.

The “B-21 has been performing close to the original schedule and costs and delivering capability,” he said. “It’s in testing. We just had the milestone C approval to enter low-rate production.”

That approval was given by LaPlante in December after the B-21 made its first flight in November of 2023. The Air Force has subsequently acknowledged only one further test flight, although more are likely to have been flown. Northrop officials have said that once the airplane flew the first time, a high-frequency flight test schedule would ensue.

In announcing the low-rate production schedule, LaPlante said through a spokesperson that “one of the key attributes of this program has been designing for production from the start—and at scale—to provide a credible deterrent … if you don’t produce and field to warfighters at scale, the capability doesn’t really matter.”

The Pentagon did not specify any of the terms of Northrop’s B-21 production contract, citing classification. To date, the Air Force has still not even disclosed whether the bomber has two or four engines.

Two years ago, Kendall voiced the idea of developing an uncrewed adjunct to the B-21 in the conventional deep strike/nuclear mission, but later shelved that idea as being “not cost-effective.” However, the B-21 has been characterized from its inception as being part of a “family of long-range strike systems” acknowledged to include some kind of flying armed or electronic warfare escorts communications relay aircraft, or both.

Poohbah · Post by **Poohbah** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 10:13 pm

James1978 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:06 pm Despite the B-21 officially being the "Raider", it would be amusing if future AI fighters pick up an unofficial name of Cylon or Raider.

US Air Force stages dogfights with AI-flown fighter jet
By Stephen Losey
19 April 2024

An experimental fighter jet has squared off against an F-16 in the first-ever artificial intelligence-fueled dogfights, the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said.

And the successful effort to have the X-62A VISTA engage in practice aerial combat could help the Air Force further refine its plans for autonomous drone wingmen known as collaborative combat aircraft, officials told reporters Friday.

VISTA, which stands for Variable In-flight Simulator Aircraft, is a heavily modified F-16 operated by the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The service has used it to test cutting-edge aerospace technology for more than three decades, and in recent years it’s been used to test autonomous flight capabilities.

DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution, or ACE, program has been working for the last four years to refine how the military can use AI for air warfare and build airmen’s trust that autonomous technology can perform safely and reliably in combat.

Until now, the military has used autonomy for aspects of flight that are predictable and based on a set of known rules, such as the Auto Ground Collision Avoidance System that keeps jets such as the F-35 from crashing. But within-visual range dogfighting — perhaps the most dangerous, unpredictable form of flight a pilot can engage in — represented an entirely different set of skills for AI to learn, said Col. James Valpiani, commandant of the Air Force Test Pilot School.

“Dogfighting presents a very important challenge case for the question of trust” in autonomy, Valpiani said. “It’s inherently very dangerous. It’s one of the most difficult competencies that military aviators must master.”

The ACE program started by having AI agents control simulated F-16s while dogfighting in computers. Those AI-operated simulated F-16s went five for five against human pilots, DARPA said in a video posted online. But they weren’t yet trained to follow safety guidelines — including those that keep a pilot from breaking the jet — and other ethical requirements such as combat training rules and weapons engagement zones.

In December 2022 and April 2023, the Air Force and DARPA started actual flight tests with AI agents flying VISTA. And in September 2023, it was time for VISTA to go toe-to-toe with a human pilot.

For two weeks, VISTA flew against an F-16 in a variety of scenarios, including situations where it started at a disadvantage against the human-flown jet. VISTA started off by flying defensively to build up confidence in its flight safety, before switching to intense offensive maneuvers. Valpiani said the jets flew aggressively at speeds of up to 1,200 miles per hour and within 2,000 feet of one another, including carrying out nose-to-nose passes and vertical maneuvering.

Two pilots were in VISTA’s cockpit to monitor its systems and switch between different AI agents to test their performance, but they never had to take over flying. VISTA carried out 21 test flights between December 2022 and September 2023.

Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, DARPA’s ACE program manager, and Valpiani said the AI-flown VISTA performed well and tested a variety of agents with multiple different capabilities. But they declined to say how many times VISTA beat the human-flown F-16.

“The purpose of the test was to demonstrate we can safely test these AI agents in a safety-critical air combat environment,” Hefron said.

Hefron and Valpiani said the ACE program learned multiple lessons from the dogfighting tests, including how to quickly adapt AI software and upload it to the jet, sometime while already in flight.

Hefron said the program next plans to hold more VISTA-versus-F-16 matches to refine the technology and test out different scenarios.

They declined to say whether the ACE program’s dogfighting effort might one day lead to a future fighter fleet without pilots in the cockpit, saying those “long range vision” questions are better suited for Air Force leadership. But Valpiani noted that developments such as Auto-GCAS haven’t replaced pilots’ need to be continually aware of their terrain, and only serve as a backup failsafe.

And the lessons learned from ACE could apply to more than just dogfighting, they said. ACE will allow the service to create uncrewed CCAs that can autonomously fly alongside crewed fighters such as F-35s and the Next-Generation Air Dominance platform, carrying out missions such as airstrikes and reconnaissance operations.

“The X-62A program and DARPA’s ACE program are not primarily about dogfighting,” Hefron said. “They’re really about building trust in responsible AI. The key takeaway from our September event is that we can do that safely, we can do it effectively.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is confident enough in the ACE program’s progress that he plans to soon fly as a passenger in the AI-operated VISTA. DARPA and the Air Force declined to say more specifically when Kendall will fly in VISTA.

“There will be a pilot with me who will just be watching, as I will be, as the autonomous technology works,” Kendall told senators during a budget hearing April 9. “Hopefully neither he or I will be needed to fly the airplane.”

They'll get nicknamed "Toasters."

What's the immediate action drill when the LEDs start turning on and off in a back and forth pattern and the aircraft says "By your command?"

jemhouston · Post by **jemhouston** » Sun Apr 21, 2024 10:52 pm

If that happens, ask their call sign. If they answer, Hal, Forbin, or Skynet, hit the EPO.

Rocket J Squrriel · Post by **Rocket J Squrriel** » Tue Jun 18, 2024 2:40 am

B-52J IOC is now looking like 2033. The radar is behind schedule and way over budget.

https://www.twz.com/air/b-52s-with-new- ... until-2033

The U.S. Air Force is not set to reach initial operational capability (IOC) with its re-engined B-52 bombers until Fiscal Year 2033, some three years later than originally planned, amid delays and cost growth. The critical radar upgrade program for the bombers has also seen its price tag grow and is experiencing schedule slips of its own, according to a new report from a Congressional watchdog.

New details about issues with the two most significant upgrades that the Air Force's B-52H bombers are set to receive in the coming years were included in an annual report on major U.S. military programs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released earlier today. The War Zone just explored the broader modernization plan for the B-52s, which are set to be redesignated as B-52Js once all the work is completed and to serve through at least 2050, in an in-depth explainer video that you can watch below.

"The program noted that there have been program delays in part due to funding shortfalls to complete the detailed design, but that it has worked with the contractors and submitted budget requests to support critical design review in August 2025 and initial operational capability in mid-fiscal year 2033," GAO's new report says in regard to what is formally known as the B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP). "Delays ... are a result of underestimating the level of funding needed to complete the detailed design activities. Specifically, as the B-52 prototyping effort was extended from preliminary design to critical design, program officials received a proposal for the detailed design work."

In 2021, the Air Force announced that it had decided to replace the eight existing and out-of-production Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines on each of its B-52Hs on a one-for-one basis with new Rolls-Royce F130s. The F130s offer improved fuel economy and lower maintenance requirements, which are expected to translate to cost savings on sustainment and operational benefits, including extended range, as you read more about here.

The Air Force has previously acknowledged delays, as well as cost growth, with CERP. However, as recently as June 2023, the service was still expecting to reach IOC with the re-engined B-52s in Fiscal Year 2030, as originally planned.

CERP's projected total cost is unclear, with GAO's new report saying that the Air Force "has not developed formal cost ... estimates" as of January of this year. In February, Defense News reported that the service was still awaiting updated cost data from Boeing, which is in charge of integrating the new engines. Last week, Inside Defense reported that data buried in the Air Force's 2025 Fiscal Year budget request pointed to an increase in CERP's procurement cost, specifically, of approximately $1 billion, from roughly $8 billion to some $9 billion.

The War Zone has reached out to the Air Force for an update on CERP's cost estimates.

The separate "B-52 RMP [Radar Modernization Program] declared a cost breach in September 2023 due to issues with lab testing," according to the new report from GAO. "Costs grew by 12.6 percent since the program’s initial estimate in 2021 due to additional hardware and labor for three integration labs, installation of test equipment, and an additional year of contractor support."

More specifically, "program officials stated that delays with the display and sensor processor are the primary cause. Specifically, the processor’s fiber optic converter—which provides communication between processors—did not work in testing."

Under RMP, the Air Force is looking to replace the mechanically-scanned AN/APQ-166 radars in each of its 76 B-52Hs with new active electronically-scanned array (AESA) types derived from the AN/APG-79. Versions of this radar are currently found on F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers, as well as the U.S. Marine Corps' remaining legacy F/A-18 Hornets. For the B-52, the new radar promises greater range and fidelity, as well as improved general situational awareness and resistance to countermeasures. The radar could bring additional capabilities, including electronic warfare and communications support, and work together with the targeting pods already on the bombers to help with target acquisition and identification, including of potentially hostile aircraft. They will also be able to guide networked weapons onto their targets over long distances, provide a secondary ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and synthetic aperture radar surveillance capabilities. They may even be used to defend the B-52 from air-to-air threats.

GAO says that the RMP's total estimated cost in 2021 was $2.343 billion ($1.327 billion in developmental costs and another $1.015 billion in procurement costs). As of August 2023, this had risen to $2.580 billion ($1.437 billion and $1.143 billion for development and procurement, respectively).

The Air Force is again releasing those cost estimates and may not have a new price point established until March 2025, per GAO.

RMP is also experiencing delays, though they are not yet as significant as the ones impacting CERP. "The program delayed its low-rate production dates by an additional 6 months" to March 2025 and "other future dates by an average of 3 months," GAO says.

How this may have impacted the expected IOC date for B-52s with the new radar is unclear. As of June 2023, the Air Force said it was still hoping to reach that milestone in Fiscal Year 2027.

It is not an understatement to say CERP and RMP are critical to the future of the B-52, which is set to soldier on for decades to come. The Air Force's current plan is to retire its other current bombers, the B-1 and B-2, as the new stealthy B-21 Raider comes into service.

“While CERP is extremely important, and obviously B-52J gets a lot of attention, this [RMP] is probably one of the most critical programs that we’re doing and upgrades that we’re doing to make sure that this is combat effective," Air Force Col. Louis Ruscetta, B-52 senior materiel leader, told reporters during a tour of facilities in Oklahoma related to the upgrade work last year, according to Inside Defense.

The Air Force's B-52s are set to get a host of other upgrades in the coming years, as well. This includes new communication systems, improved electronic warfare suites, and new weapons, such as the nuclear-armed AGM-181A Long Range Stand Off (LRSO) cruise missile and future conventionally-armed hypersonic weapons, in the coming years. All of this is to help ensure the bombers, the last of which rolled off Boeing's production in the 1960s, will remain relevant nuclear and conventional strike platforms in future conflicts, including potential high-end ones like a major fight in the Pacific against China.

The new details about delays and cost growth with key B-52 upgrade programs also come amid talk about looming budget cuts across the board, even possibly to top-priority efforts like the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative, which are widely expected to come in the 2026 Fiscal Year.

“There are a lot of things that we probably might not have contemplated a few years ago, we’re taking a hard look at," Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told Aviation Week about Fiscal Year 2026 budget planning in a recent interview.

“The way we were able to put together a five-year plan and submit it was through taking—what I think ultimately will turn out to be—unacceptable reductions in current force and sustainment," Kendall also said, according to a new report from Aviation Week today.

The Air Force's budget in Fiscal year 2026 will be "very, very thin across the board," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said during a talk that the Air & Space Forces Association hosted last week.

How the Air Force's plans for modernizing its B-52 bombers may evolve over the next few years, and whether more delays and cost increases may emerge, remains to be seen.

The engine upgrade program, in particular, is still set to be one of the most substantial improvements to the B-52 in decades, even though the Air Force is currently expecting it to take 12 years to go from the initial contract award to B-52s powered by F130s flying actual operational missions. Nevertheless, it's a bit shocking to comprehend given that the original version of the bomber went from first flight to operational service in just around three years.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

kdahm · Post by **kdahm** » Tue Jun 18, 2024 2:51 am

Absurd. The schedule is way too over-extended. Eight to ten years to bolt on new engines? I realize the electronic engine control stuff needs to be revised too, but that's mostly ripping out a bunch of wiring and display panels, putting in some MFDs in the flight engineer's station, then dropping in some digital to analog converters for the pilot's panels. It's not like it's a fully integrated electronics platform.

Pdf27 · Post by **Pdf27** » Tue Jun 18, 2024 5:28 am

kdahm wrote: ↑Tue Jun 18, 2024 2:51 am Absurd. The schedule is way too over-extended. Eight to ten years to bolt on new engines? I realize the electronic engine control stuff needs to be revised too, but that's mostly ripping out a bunch of wiring and display panels, putting in some MFDs in the flight engineer's station, then dropping in some digital to analog converters for the pilot's panels. It's not like it's a fully integrated electronics platform.

Does rather make you wonder what else is wrong under the skin...

Belushi TD · Post by **Belushi TD** » Tue Jun 18, 2024 12:49 pm

Or what else they're trying to do under cover of re-engine-ing.

Belushi TD

MikeKozlowski · Post by **MikeKozlowski** » Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:55 am

ACC To Institute Open Ranks inspections, Review Beard Waivers:

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-for ... nspection/

The uniform inspections had BETTER simply be for utility uniforms - as nearly as I can tell, there's damned few people anymore who go to work in blues every day any more. There's NO reason a utility uniform can't be pressed/lightly starched, and boots at least brushed to get the dust off 'em. And overall, there shouldn't be a shop that can't take ten minutes in the morning to check everybody out.

The shaving waivers are a touchier subject, but I'll say this - if it's to the point where the senior leadership is saying things, it can't be good. Religious beard exemptions...I'll be straight up with you: unless you're a Sikh, you're going to have to convince me. My feeling is that if USAF has chaplains in a given faith that requires a beard in recognized scripture, then make your case. If not, then maybe My Beloved Service isn't a good fit for you. And regardless, there need to be monthly inspections/reviews of any beard waivers.

Thus endeth today's rant.

Mike

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