US Air Force News

[James1978]

Robot Rescue? Air Force Seeks New Way to Recover Downed Troops
The CSAR helicopters it’s currently buying can’t handle the mission in a conflict with China, officials say.

By Audrey Decker
April 27, 2023

Declaring its current and planned fleets of combat search and rescue helicopters ill-suited to the vast Indo-Pacific theater, the U.S. Air Force is looking for better—and possibly uncrewed—ways to rescue troops should conflict break out with China.

The service currently handles such missions worldwide with 99 HH-60G Pave Hawks. It has begun to buy HH-60W Jolly Green IIs to replace them, but last year announced that it would cut its planned purchase from 113 to 75. That change, which reflected the past years’ shift from counterterrorism to great-power competition, displeased Congress, which put an extra 10 HH-60Ws in the 2023 budget and passed a provision to keep the production line running.

On Wednesday, the service’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs went to Capitol Hill to make the case for another solution.

The HH-60W is “not particularly helpful in the Chinese” area of responsibility, Lt. Gen. Richard Moore said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Service airland subcommittee.

That’s largely because the Sikorsky-made aircraft is not expected to be “survivable to the threat environment,” said Lt. Gen James Slife, the service’s deputy chief of staff for operations. “You end up losing more people trying to recover somebody than the person you lost to begin with. And so the challenge we're facing is really how to address the question of how we will do personnel recovery in a contested environment.”

So the Air Force is now considering “non-traditional” methods, such as unmanned platforms, to “fulfill that moral imperative of leaving nobody behind,” Slife said.

When asked whether the Air Force will still use HH-60Ws in the Pacific, Slife said it depends on the scenario and the threat.

“There’s still applicability for them, but I don’t think that’s the end state of our personnel recovery mission area,” Slife said.

The Air Force is working to get the remaining HH-60W helicopters on contract with Sikorsky “in the next several days,” Andrew Hunter, the service’s top weapon buyer, said at the hearing.

Moore said the fleet of 85 HH-60Ws will be “more than sufficient” for the service’s combat search and rescue needs, while other aircraft can handle the less demanding task of personnel recovery.

“There are literally thousands of platforms in the Department of Defense that can do personnel recovery. This fleet is for something very specific: it was purchased for Iraq and Afghanistan,” Moore said.

[James1978]

Boeing T-7A Red Hawk Trainer Jet Delayed Again, Now Targeting IOC In 2027
May 2, 2023
By Stefano D'Urso

Issues in the testing of the Boeing T-7A Red Hawk’s ejection seat forced the postponement of the production’s start, which in turn will delay the expected Initial Operational Capability.

The troubled saga of the Boeing T-7A Red Hawk, the aircraft expected to replace the obsolete T-38C, continues with yet another delay. In fact, according to U.S. Air Force’s Service Acquisition Executive Andrew Hunter, the new advanced trainer jet won’t achieve the Initial Operational Capability until early 2027, a year later than the latest projection after the milestone was first moved from the original 2024 target.

The delay is caused by the postponement of the Milestone C decision, as the beginning of the low-rate initial production had to be delayed because of issues discovered in early flight testing, now solved, and others discovered during testing of the ejection seat. Because of the latter, flight testing by Air Force pilots had to be delayed too, as the jet did not qualify for the Military Flight Release yet.

“Due to issues discovered in the early development and test phase of the program, the Air Force is delaying its Milestone C decision to initiate the buy of T-7A production aircraft”, said Hunter in April. “By extension, this will shift the T-7A program’s initial operational capability (IOC) into the spring of 2027. We are pursuing risk reduction activities to mitigate some of these schedule challenges.”

The issues were specifically discovered during testing of the egress system with mannequins of the smallest class of pilot’s body types expected to fly the aircraft. The tests showed high risk for concussions, unsafe acceleration when the parachute opens and the possibility that a pilot’s helmet visor could fly off at high speeds, according to Air Force spokespersons.

The Government Accountability Office already flagged the T-7’s ejection seat as a “top” program risk and one of two “primary” risks to the trainer’s development. That is because the Air Force mandated in 2020 that companies must design future aircraft to fit a wider range of recruitable Americans, but creating an ejection seat that could work for all these different body types is proving to be tricky.

Hunter said that in February the development team was able to achieve important results during sled tests, dealing with some of the issues of the ejection seat. Clearing these tests will allow the issue of a Military Flight Release to begin the developmental testing, as military pilots are not allowed to fly on the aircraft until the problems with the ejection seat are solved.

The T-7’s design philosophy aligns with the US Air Force’s Digital Century Series strategy, which sees the use of advanced manufacturing, agile software development and digital engineering technology to significantly reduce the time from design to first flight. Even if this allowed to identify and mitigate issues earlier in the development, other issues such as supplier-side critical parts shortages, initial design delays and the need for additional testing to solve stability issues delayed the program.

The T-7, in fact, was affected by a “wing rock” problem, which means the aircraft was unstable in the roll axis when flying at high angles of attack. The continuous oscillations in the roll axis are an undesired effect of swept wings at high angles of attack in various flight conditions, which make the aircraft more difficult to control. Boeing says this issue was solved months ago with a software fix.

Developmental flight testing of the T-7A Red Hawk is expected to begin this summer, with the Milestone C now planned for early 2025, instead of November 2023 as announced in December 2022. This way, the first aircraft would be delivered between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026. This also reflects the fact that the production of T-7 was removed from the Fiscal Year 2024 budget request and shifted to the following year.

So far Boeing has built five T-7s, including the first two prototypes T1 and T2. The latter are still flying, although they are not fully representative of the eventual operational aircraft. T1 was also seen in December 2022 during testing of the spin recovery chute ahead of the next round of flight testing, as you can see in the photos in this article kindly sent to us by Jerry McGrath of Cryonic_Photography.

Boeing rolled out the production variant of the Red Hawk in April 2022, bearing the tail flash of the 99th Flying Training Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, which will be the first unit to operate the new airplane. In the meanwhile, however, the Air Force might have to further extend the service life of some of the T-38s, which are already more than 60 years old.

[James1978]

Kendall and Brown: JATM Will Start Production This Year, Equip Collaborative Combat Aircraft
May 2, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The secretive AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile will “hopefully” enter production this year, at an accelerated rate, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 2. The JATM will also equip the Collaborative Combat Aircraft when the unmanned autonomous drones enter service, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. added.

“We’re entering production, hopefully, for JATM, the new air-to-air missile,” Kendall said at the congressional hearing. “And we’re going to be asking for funds to increase the size of that production line [and] increase capacity of our production line from what we originally had planned.”

The Air Force has not specified any production targets for JATM. The missile, which will serve the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps air fleets, was originally expected to have achieved initial operational capability in 2022. The Air Force is leading development on the weapon, which will first be deployed on the F-22 fighter but also has been described as equipping the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems.

JATM will have significantly longer range than the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), the Air Force’s primary air-to-air weapon which is it replacing. It will also likely have a multimode seeker, but details of its capability and performance are closely held.

Brown offered a new detail, however, in noting that JATM will also equip Collaborative Combat Aircraft—the unmanned, autonomous drones that will fly alongside manned platforms.

As the follow-on to AMRAAM, the JATM will be “an important aspect to support the Collaborative Combat Aircraft,” Brown told lawmakers.

The Air Force is still fleshing out what it wants the CCA program to be, but Kendall said he expects the drones to be in service by the end of the decade. However, the service does not have a roadmap for CCAs, just as it does not for several other other key modernization programs.

When asked why that is by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Kendall said the nature of the threat—China’s capabilities—is dynamic and changing rapidly. The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board is currently working on the Air Force is structured and “what our future posture might look like,” Kendall said, and the service will likely need to reorganize itself around new capabilities like CCAs and stealth tankers.

The service will also have to change “how we’re structured to do acquisition” to better keep up with a changing threat, as “we are not transitioning science and technologies [as] quickly … or efficiently” as needed into capabilities, Kendall noted.

The push to accelerate JATM production in particular is one of several ways the Air Force is seeking to expand its munitions capacity, Kendall said. The service is also requesting multiyear procurement authority for AMRAAM, the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Weapon (LRASM).

The boost in AMRAAM procurement isn’t a sign of trouble in the JATM program, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs Lt. Gen. Richard Moore said at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event in early April.

Indeed, the extra funding for munitions procurement—Kendall characterized it as roughly $1.5 billion—“will help facilitize … [and] increase the production rate, not only for AMRAAM” but JATM as well, Brown said May 2.

“We want to get to JATM as quickly as we possibly can,” Moore said in April, emphasizing that “once production gets underway, “we’ll get to quantity as fast as we can.”

The emphasis on increased and faster munitions procurement is driven by lessons from Ukraine, Moore and other officials have said. The rapid drawdown of U.S. weapons to provide to Ukraine—without the ability to swiftly replenish them for U.S. stocks—is driving the Pentagon to seek an increase in production. That means the AMRAAM, and any production line “that’s hot and is producing right now,” is seeing an increase, he said.

[James1978]

Long-Delayed Nuclear Modernization More Important Than Ever, AFGSC Boss Says
May 7, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

It’s come a few decades later than perhaps it should have, but the U.S. is on the precipice of sweeping and much-needed modernization for its nuclear arsenal, the Air Force’s top boss for strategic forces said May 4.

The Pentagon is spending over $600 billion on its nuclear enterprise this decade, investing in new command, control, and communications systems, ballistic missile submarines, stealth bombers, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, said after the Cold War, the U.S.’s decision not to invest in its nuclear forces was “based on what the world was presenting at the time.” The U.S. was holding out hope on the prospect of friendly relations with Russia, while the economic rise of China was welcomed by many as a peaceful development.

After that, the U.S. military was engaged in two decades of conflict primarily in the Middle East as part of the Global War on Terror—hardly something that put the capabilities of America’s nuclear weapons at the top of mind.

“In hindsight, we would all agree” the U.S. should have started aspects of its current nuclear modernization sooner, Bussiere said at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute. “But we are where we are.”

Now, the need to modernize is acute, Bussiere said. The U.S.’s main adversaries, Russia and China, are not shy about their nuclear capabilities.

“We are now facing two nuclear peer adversaries that have the capability to hold at risk almost anything in any domain at a time and place of their choosing,” Bussiere said. “That’s a very unique aspect that our nation has not faced in many, many decades.”

One of the answers to that issue is the need to invest in a strong nuclear deterrence force, said Bussiere, who took command of AFGSC in December. Bussiere’s comments are backed up by the Nuclear Posture Review released by President Joe Biden’s administration’s last October.

“Our nuclear capabilities remain the ultimate backstop for our strategic deterrence, and that’s why we’re fully committed to modernizing all three legs of our nuclear triad,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at the time.

Two legs of the nation’s nuclear triad—the nation’s strategic bomber fleet and intercontinental ballistic missiles—fall on the shoulders of over 30,000 AFGSC Airmen. The U.S. is investing billions in the Sentinel ICBM, the Long Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is on the “back end of the operational margin” of many of its current systems, Bussiere noted.

Yet even the modernization efforts currently underway began before it was clear China was on pace to end up with an arsenal of 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, according to the Pentagon’s most recent assessment, and in the context of an arms control regime that no longer exists with Russia’s “suspension” of the New START nuclear arms treaty—which is due to expire altogether in 2026.

“We had decades of strategic stability mechanisms with the Soviet Union and then Russia,” Bussiere said. “Even though New START necessarily didn’t account for all of Russia’s weapons, it provided a stability in the international order with that treaty. We have no such thing with China.”

Bussiere said he welcomed a “healthy mix” of strong U.S. nuclear forces, robust international treaties, and nonproliferation mechanisms to stop the list of nuclear states from growing.

AFGSC, however, cannot live in an idealized world, Bussiere warned.

“The international environment is more complicated now than it’s ever been since I’ve been in the Air Force,” Bussiere said. “The current recapitalization efforts in all three legs were planned really against the 2010 threat environment. In my mind, it only makes our efforts to recapitalize more important.”

[James1978]

F-22 Raptor Returns to the Skies, 5 Years After Severe Damage from Botched Takeoff
May 8, 2023 | By David Roza

An Air Force F-22 Raptor flew once again May 4, five years after it suffered extensive damage from a botched takeoff on April 13, 2018.

With only 186 Raptors in the entire Air Force inventory, getting just one of the formidable air-to-air fighters back to operations represents a significant achievement for the 3rd Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, where the F-22 is assigned.

“There are only so many F-22s in the inventory,” Chief Master Sgt. Adam Willeford, the 3rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron senior enlisted leader, said in a press release. “Every aircraft in the fleet is highly valuable for mission success, so returning this one to operational status is a big win for the team.”

An Accident Investigation Board blamed the 2018 crash on incorrect takeoff and landing data, an inadequate flight brief, and the pilot prematurely retracting the landing gear. The pilot was taking off from Naval Air Station Fallon, Nev., for a TOPGUN graduation exercise when the mishap occurred. The pilot rotated the aircraft—bringing the nose up—at 120 knots, and as the aircraft indicated its wheels were leaving the ground, the pilot retracted the landing gear. Immediately after the landing gear retracted, the aircraft “settled” back on the runway with the doors fully closed.

The Raptor slid about 6,500 feet down the runway before coming to a stop, at which point the uninjured pilot got out of the cockpit. The investigation board later found the pilot should have achieved a higher speed before rotation, but that aviators within the F-22 community tended to be overconfident that the jet’s high thrust could “overcome deviations from [takeoff and landing data]. This perception has led to a decreased emphasis on the takeoff data.”

The board did not specify the exact cost of the mishap, but the recovery process was extensive, with the fighter having to be partially rebuilt in order to reenter service. Maintainers started by disassembling the jet and shipping it back to Alaska aboard a C-5 Galaxy transport jet—disassembly alone took a month.

“We took off everything that was damaged and everything that wouldn’t fit dimensionally,” Staff Sgt. Ethan Rentz, a crew chief with the 3rd Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU), said in a 2021 press release. “We removed the wings and vertical stabilizers, and the whole belly of the F-22 because those panels were damaged and burnt. We couldn’t have those panels flapping around or breaking off during transit.”

When the aircraft returned to Alaska, the Air Force first had to determine if it was even worth restoring. The simulations suggested it was, said Tech. Sgt. Kevin Fitch, another crew chief with the 3rd AMU. In January 2020, the Raptor was mounted on stands in a hangar and stripped of its wire harnesses, struts, and bulkheads.

“It was down to the bones of the fuselage at that point,” Fitch said in a release.

It took 16 months for contractors, engineers, and structures experts to replace the entire bottom of the aircraft, the fuselage stations, and more than 40 wire harnesses. It was not until June 2021 that Active-Duty Airmen finally got involved in the rebuild. Fitch kept inventory lists and spreadsheets to track the large number of replacement parts the damaged jet required.

“Sgt. Fitch picked this up from nothing,” Rentz said in the release. “He’s operating at a master or senior master sergeant level because he’s not just handling crew chief tasks, he’s coordinating with multiple different backshops and agencies. He’s essentially running a one-man aircraft squadron.”

Gathering parts was the biggest challenge for repairing the Raptor, since the jet and its replacement parts are no longer manufactured. The recovery process may have taken even longer if another F-22 had not crashed at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., in 2022, when its landing gear collapsed. Maintainers from the JBER-based 90th Aircraft Maintenance Unit journeyed to Eglin to cannibalize parts from the downed Raptor, including the leading edge, two flaps, and a seat.

Though the cannibalizing will prolong the recovery time for the Eglin F-22, it helped the JBER Raptor return to duty earlier—ensuring at least one jet is flying.

On May 4, Lt. Col. Philip Johnson, a functional-check-flight pilot assigned to the 514th Flight Test Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, flew a test flight of the F-22.

“They did a great job on the airplane,” he said in the press release. “There were some minor maintenance notes found during the sortie, but those will be handled by maintenance. It’s good to go back to operational flying.”

The return of the F-22 to operational status is one of many minor miracles military aircraft maintainers accomplish on a regular basis. Air Force maintainers restored an A-10 “Warthog” four years after belly-landing in Michigan, while Navy sailors once brought back an EA-18G Growler that had been considered beyond repair five years after suffering a mid-air collision.

“Five months ago it had no struts, no wings, no flight controls, no hydraulics, no stabilizers,” Fitch said in December 2021. “Seeing the progress and doing something out of the ordinary has been really rewarding. … It’s going to be very satisfying when it flies.”

[James1978]

Numbered Air Force commander got relieved this time.

Air Force Relieves Commander at 19th Air Force
May 10, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Maj. Gen. Phillip A. Stewart was relieved for loss of confidence in his ability to command the 19th Air Force, Air Education and Training Command announced May 10.

Stewart was relieved for alleged misconduct, which was not described in further detail. AETC said the matter is under investigation.

“The Air Force takes any misconduct allegation seriously and is committed to conducting a thorough investigation,” AETC commander Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson said in a statement.

Brig. Gen. Christopher R. Amrhein, 19th Air Force’s vice commander, was named the interim commander. Amrhein has been with the 19th Air Force since August 2021 and was previously inspector general for Air Mobility Command.

The 19th Air Force is one of two Numbered Air Forces under AETC and is responsible for all flying training in the Air Force, from Undergraduate Pilot Training to formal training units. It also oversees training programs for air battle managers, weapons directors, Air Force Academy Airmanship, and survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE).

Stewart assumed command of the 19th Air Force in August 2022 after previous commands at the wing and squadron levels. He also has been the Air Force’s top adviser in Afghanistan and deputy chief of staff for strategic employment at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. A command pilot with more than 2,600 hours, he has flown the F-15C, A-29, U-2, MC-12, AT-38, T-38, T-37, and RQ-4.

He is the second 19th Air Force Commander to be relieved. In 2015, Maj. Gen. Michael Keltz resigned from his position as commander of 19th Air Force following “an inappropriate comment” made in a “public Air Force forum.”

[James1978]

Air Force Fleshing Out Key Component Of NGAD Program
5/8/2023
By Sean Carberry

AURORA, Colorado — The Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, platform intended to replace current fifth-generation fighter jets has long been shrouded in secrecy, but the service has been providing more details about one component of the program — the jet fighter drones that will team with the piloted sixth-generation aircraft.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall revealed in March that the initial plan is to acquire 1,000 of the collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA. The service arrived at the number by assuming that two of the uncrewed jets will accompany each of an initial tranche of 200 NGAD fighters and 300 F-35 fighters, he said at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium.

“This isn't an inventory objective, but a planning assumption to use for analysis of things such as basing, organizational structures, training and range requirements and sustainment concepts,” he said.

“The CCAs will complement and enhance the performance of our crewed fighter force structure,” he continued. “They will not impact planned crewed fighter inventory. One way to think of CCAs is as remotely controlled versions of the targeting pods, electronic warfare pods, or weapons now carried under the wings of our crewed aircraft.”

Service officials involved in developing the NGAD and their so-called “loyal wingmen” elaborated on the program at the symposium, describing the drones as “affordable mass.”

“If we can get a price point that gets what Secretary Kendall talked about — maybe up to 1,000 air vehicles out there at a price point that gives us enough capability to provide effect on the battlespace — it’s really a game-changing kind of concept,” said Maj. Gen. Scott Jobe, director of plans, programs and requirements at Air Combat Command.

“It doesn't mean though that this is an attritable type of platform, and that's been a common misconception,” he continued. “We're going to reuse these air vehicles, and the decision for risk and the risk that we will take with these types of capabilities will be at the mission command or at the combined forces air component commander level.”

The Air Force, Navy and other components of the Defense Department have performed analyses on the affordable mass concept that “show overwhelmingly that this provides us an overmatch capability and changes our loss exchange ratios dramatically in our favor,” he said.

“The unique thing that CCAs bring to the fight is the ability to do fire and maneuver in a different way,” he said. “And you accept risk in a different way because you're going to have different tactics, techniques and procedures.”

Piloted fighting tactics involve formations of multiple aircraft supporting each other, he said. “With the collaborative combat aircraft, you're not necessarily constrained by that because you can make different risk decisions.”

Initially, the loyal wingmen will be limited to specific mission sets, starting with air-to-air capabilities, he said. As the technology matures and proves itself, missions will evolve in complexity to involve surface and maritime targets.

They will also “include sensor packages so we can sense the environment from an air moving target indicator kind of perspective,” he said.

However, concepts of operation will remain just concepts unless the service and industry can deliver the technology and capability in an affordable manner.

And that’s where industry comes in to help define what capabilities exist today and what is feasible in the coming years, said David Alexander, president of the aircraft systems group at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.

“It's going to be really important that we can tap into the commercial market that already has production lines that are set up to support this program,” he said.

“We need to make sure that we've got a propulsion set up so either they can support that kind of rate, or even better, maybe have [it] where the airframe can take two different suppliers for propulsion going forward,” he said.

“So, propulsion would be super key and getting into a mature product line will be key, because if you have to redesign engines, we all know that's billions of dollars that we can't afford to spend or wait for,” he added.

Then, there is the airframe and the tooling to produce it, he said.

“So that's smart tools, additive manufacturing, thermoplastics,” he said. “But again, I think the key here is to tap into the commercial market. There's a lot of capacity out there that can be used and can be used quickly,” he added.

There are healthy production lines in place now, he said. “I think you could solve ramping up on that with a lot of long-lead procurement, but it means you’ve got to get your designs squared away from the beginning and know what you're buying.”

The design and production of the platform is one major part of the equation. The other major part is the autonomy technology, said Mike Benitez, director of product for Shield AI.

“The unmanned, remotely piloted fleet that we have today is certainly manpower intensive.” It has not delivered on the past two-and-a-half generations of promise on autonomy, he said.

While there is no one in the cockpit, today’s unmanned aircraft require a lot of personnel to operate, and that’s not feasible for a fleet of 1,000 or more uncrewed systems, he said.

What will be required is “stack types of artificial intelligence” using supervised and unsupervised learning, he said.

Supervised learning “basically applies some data labeling, and then you apply some other stuff to it — some magic sauce — and at the end you're getting some generative AI,” he said.

Unsupervised learning “takes a whole bunch of data, tries to make sense of it and then it applies that through a couple other filters,” he added.

Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said that much of the technology exists to get to basic capabilities for the CCA. The Air Force’s Project Skyborg has developed autonomous aircraft teaming architecture, and the experimental XQ-58A Valkyrie has demonstrated capability, he said.

“You take the autonomy that we have, you build it on top of a common architecture that is government-owned — I think that's critically important,” he said. “We need that common architecture, because that way we can make this a platform-agnostic discussion, because if you build autonomy each time you field the new platform, we've gone about this all wrong.”

Critical to advancing the concept is putting the capability into the “hands of the captains, and we need to let them lead us through this, and we need to iterate as a function of time,” he said.

“The modularity piece is absolutely critical, because” as he told the secretary of the Air Force, “We could easily overreach here and make this a 15- or 20-year development program. We're really good at that, right?”

Benitez said that there are several constraints to developing the AI needed for collaborative combat aircraft.

“There's really only a few people in the United States who even have [large aircraft] that can host autonomy to do experimentation,” he said.

There is the X-62 Vista, the modified F-16 that Shield AI flew in December. “It's a great aircraft. There's only one in the whole world — one. So, we're kind of a slave to that platform,” he said.

“As we move to the Valkyrie in a few months, we'll be flying autonomy on the Valkyrie down at Eglin as part of an Air Force program,” he added. “That's great, but there's only two of them. And in your launch and recovery reconstitution, we still have to flesh out some of that to do what we call ‘fly-fix-fly.’ So, we want to fly, iterate, fly again.”

Without an aircraft in the hands of captains, “it's really just an academic exercise. You're not really actually getting data and testing hypotheses, because you don't have anything to test it against,” he said.

“There is a process that that autonomy has to go through that is extremely nascent,” he continued. “It's an internal validation [and] verification process that AI companies do with their autonomy product. But there also has to be an independent validation verification, and that is an [Office of the Secretary of Defense] requirement.”

Jobe said the service is mapping out a validation and verification process. There will be “live-fly events that we get data points off of and … we're going to bring it back in, we're going to adjust our algorithms, we're going to adjust even the [tactics, techniques and procedures] and operational perspective,” he said.

“Then we're going to stick it in the virtual environment and we're going to go through that iteration process multiple times,” he continued. “So, what you see flying on the range is not all the activity. There's a lot that's going on behind the scenes.”

How quickly the development progresses is ultimately a function of resources and authorities, Kendall said. The Air Force’s $185 billion budget request for fiscal year 2024 includes $522 million for research, development, test and evaluation for the program.

“We're going to buy some assets that are not the ultimate CCA, but which we can use for a variety of things to develop operational concepts, to develop technology, [to] reduce the risk of the program for the CCAs,” he said. “And also start to think through some things like how we train, what kind of organizational structures we have, etc.”

The program will be a full competition, and there are “a lot of candidates” who have been working on the concept based on information the service has released to date, he said.

The aspiration is to field the first tranche of NGAD before the end of the decade. One of the biggest potential sources of delay could be Congress, he said. As a new start, the CCA program will require authorization and funding from Congress.

“It's going to be very hard to get bills out this year,” he said. “I think our committees are generally committed to getting that done.

“But I can foresee some difficulties as we move forward,” he continued. “And I keep pounding that drum because, you know, you can't go fast until you can start. And we can't start until we have the authorizations and the appropriations.”

[James1978]

Permanent fighter force for Kadena still an option: Air Force general
By Stephen Losey
May 10, 2023

WASHINGTON — Nearly six months after the Air Force began withdrawing its aging F-15C and D Eagles from Kadena Air Base in Japan, the service is still trying to figure out its long-term plan to maintain a deterrent fighter presence at the Pacific region base.

And permanently stationing a new force of fighters at Kadena is still being considered, Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, told Defense News.

In an interview at the Pentagon, Moore underscored the Air Force’s intent to keep a fighter force on Okinawa to reassure allies in the Pacific region and deter potential adversaries, particularly China — even if what that might look like is not yet settled.

“We are committed to maintaining a presence at Kadena,” Moore said. “We understand presence is important. We understand its value in deterrence. And so we’re going to continue to maintain that — although there is a price to be paid, that in our minds is well worth it.”

Until a long-term solution presents itself, Moore said the Air Force will continue its strategy of rotating newer fighters such as the F-35, F-22 Raptor, F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon through Kadena as older F-15Cs and Ds return to the U.S. Some of Kadena’s F-15s will keep flying with the Air National Guard, and others are headed to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in Arizona — also known as the Boneyard — for storage.

“We don’t want there to be any lapse in coverage,” Moore said. “So however long it takes to get to a permanent solution, whatever that may be, we will continue to maintain a presence at Kadena. And we’ll do that, as we are now, with rotational forces.”

The Air Force’s announcement last October that it would retire the 18th Wing’s two squadrons of more than 48 F-15s in phases over two years, and rotate newer fourth- and fifth-generation fighters to take their place, drew criticism. Four Republican lawmakers soon sent Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin a letter expressing concern that no longer having fighters permanently stationed on Okinawa sent the wrong message about the United States’ commitment to defending Japan.

Finding a way to station a new, permanent fighter force at Kadena remains an option, Moore said. But for that to become a reality, he said, it will require some careful balancing from the Air Force — and cooperation with Congress and the rest of the Defense Department. With older fighters rapidly approaching retirement across the Air Force fleet, Kadena isn’t the only base in need of new fighters.

“It comes down to the number of aircraft that are available, the number of aircraft that need to divest, and the number of locations that need to maintain a presence,” he said. “We’re working that balance, and as soon as we can, we’ll transition to a solution at Kadena.”

Moore said the Air Force made progress by requesting 72 new fighters in its fiscal 2024 budget proposal, which it says is the minimum procurement necessary to modernize its aging fighter fleet.

If Congress grants the Air Force’s request and funds the purchase of 48 new F-35As and 24 new F-15EX Eagle IIs, the service will then have to figure out how to distribute those new fighters, he said. Part of that will mean working out with Congress and combatant commanders to figure out where the new 72 fighters are most in need, as older fighters retire.

“Certainly, we don’t make that decision [on a long-term fighter solution for Kadena] ourselves,” Moore said. “That decision is overseen by the Department of Defense, and then we’ll propose that to the Congress as part of our budget proposals as soon as we have a more permanent solution [for Kadena] than we have now.”

The costs of rotational fighters
Cycling squadrons of fighters through Kadena on short-term deployments has certain benefits, like keeping aircrews trained and sharp, Moore said.

But it does come with other costs.

“In general, these deployments tend to be readiness depleting, rather than readiness gaining,” he said. “That capacity has to come from somewhere.”

There are only a handful of places where the Air Force can draw fighters to plug the gap at Kadena, Moore said, such as from other bases in the Pacific theater, Europe, stateside, or from deployments to the Middle East. The demand for fighters in the U.S. Central Command region is lower now than it was in previous years, he said. But the region still needs a U.S. fighter presence, and the military’s Joint Staff decides how to balance those needs.

“Of course, there’s a bill to be paid,” Moore said. But “we understand presence [at Kadena] is important. We understand its value in deterrence … that in our minds is well worth” the price in readiness elsewhere.

Moore also has sounded further alarms in recent public appearances about the rapidly decaying state of the overall F-15C fleet.

“Those aircraft are not going to be useful in [fiscal 2028], because they’re not going to still be flying,” Moore told the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces on March 29.

He told lawmakers in March that for every 10 F-15Cs that enter the depot for maintenance, only two come out.

Those other eight F-15Cs could be fixed up and brought out of the depot, Moore told Defense News — “but only with substantial investment.”

The Air Force reported having 149 F-15Cs and Ds in its fleet at the end of fiscal 2023, and expects to whittle that down to 92 by the end of this year.

Pacific Air Forces declined to say how many of the more than 48 F-15s originally at Kadena are left, citing operational security.

For four of those departing Kadena F-15s, the flight home will be their last — and another three won’t even be able to get in the air.

“It is imperative that the F-15Cs and Ds come back to the states,” Moore said. “There are seven airplanes at Kadena right now that either will never fly again, or will only fly once to get to the Boneyard. So they’re not particularly helpful in contributing to either presence or deterrence.”

[James1978]

Air Guard considers cutting enlisted mental health specialists
By Rachel S. Cohen
May 12, 2023

The Air National Guard is considering cutting its corps of enlisted mental health specialists, but a final decision is still in the works, a spokesperson told Air Force Times.

“Care for our airmen and their mental health is very important to the Air National Guard,” ANG spokesperson Lt. Col. Amber Schatz said in an email Monday.

She declined to answer questions about why the Guard is considering the move and when it may happen.

Around 1,000 enlisted airmen work in the mental health services field, known by the code “4C0,” across the active duty Air Force and its reserve components, according to the Air Force Association’s 2022 almanac. Schatz did not answer how many are part of the Air National Guard.

Mental health technicians are specialized medics who can help triage patients who seek treatment from their medical group for behavioral health issues like anxiety, depression and addiction.

Downsizing that corps of specialists could save money and free up airmen for higher priority Air Force jobs. But one enlisted airman who spoke to Air Force Times argues that eliminating the field would remove an important resource for individual airmen and units overall.

“If somebody’s having an issue, they can come to us first, and we can … direct them to where they need to go,” the airman said. “A lot of people don’t know how to locate a medical professional, and … there’s a lot of misconceptions.”

Techs can offer preliminary diagnoses before a patient sees a licensed health provider and determine whether a person may hurt themselves or others.

The airman recalled an instance when they assisted someone who arrived at the emergency room with suicidal thoughts. They created a list of steps to help the patient deescalate their feelings, including someone to call in a crisis, particularly in cases when a clinician isn’t available.

Their units also offer classes on stress management and coping skills, and can help prepare people for what to expect on deployments.

“Command consultation is a big part of our job, where they say, ‘Hey, we’ve been noticing … [an] uptick in drinking’ and things like that. And we can assess, ‘OK, what do you guys need, or what might you guys benefit from?’” the airman added.

The Guard believes it’s not possible or worthwhile to train its mental health technicians to the same standard as their active duty counterparts, making them unable to deploy without a waiver, the airman said. Another reason: Guardsmen don’t have the same alcohol and drug counseling certification as active duty airmen because of differences in the facilities where they work, they added.

The airman believes the considerations boil down to a lack of money and the will to fix those problems.

In technical school, the airmen learn to identify various emotional disorders and treatments before starting on-the-job training at a medical clinic. That’s where students begin to medically clear airmen for deployment, measure vital signs and understand the unique stressors of the local mission.

Distance learning could bridge that training gap without requiring part-time guardsmen to report to a military medical facility, the airman told Air Force Times. Technicians could also earn new certifications through their state instead.

Guard clinics don’t fall under the same accreditation guidelines as active duty clinics, meaning they can’t treat airmen in the same ways as active duty units, the airman added. That could be fixed by changing policies around the standards that Guard clinics must follow, they argued.

“It isn’t that we’re in the wild, wild west, and we’re just doing our own thing,” they said. “It’s that we don’t have to adhere to a lot of the policies because they don’t apply to us.”

On a personal level, the airman who spoke to Air Force Times worries the Guard’s decision will hurt people’s chances of promotion if they have to start over in another job. But those complaints have fallen on deaf ears, they said.

One option for replacing mental health technicians could be to hire more civilian directors of psychological health, the airman said. But the airman believes that having uniformed behavioral health specialists makes it easier to connect with service members who may be hesitant to open up.

At Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, the techs are part of support teams with top-secret clearances so they can meet with drone operators in secure work areas. That has helped boost access to care while alleviating airmen’s concerns about discussing their highly classified jobs.

“When you have people that can speak to that experience of being deployed … we can [prevent] adverse outcomes by giving good preparation and skill-building,” the airman said. “That’s one of the biggest roles I think we can play.”

The potential move also contradicts the recommendations of a recent Pentagon report on suicide prevention, which suggested that using those technicians more effectively could lessen the impact of a nationwide shortage of mental health care in the United States.

Seventy airmen died by suicide in 2021, according to the Pentagon’s most recent data. That jumped to 90 suspected suicides in 2022 as of Dec. 31.

The Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee recommended hiring more active duty technicians and training them in therapeutic techniques designed to change poor health habits.

It also suggested that behavioral health technicians be present when the military notifies a service member \they are under investigation, if the person is at particularly high risk of suicide.

Likewise, the report raised concerns that mental health technicians lack enough administrative support to focus on their clinical roles. Building up those offices could help the specialists spend more time with patients, the committee said.

The airman who spoke with Air Force Times hopes the Guard opts to bolster mental health technicians rather than cut their work short.

“We’re seeing people for their annual follow-ups if they’re on medication, [or] if they’re being seen by a counselor … in the civilian world,” the airman said. “Our goal is to do a lot more outreach to let everybody know we’re here.”

[James1978]

Air Force ‘Doesn’t Just Need Airplanes’ to Modernize, Kendall Says
May 9, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall insists the service needs to modernize rapidly to face the threat of China. But modernization does not just mean fielding new aircraft, Kendall and other service leaders argue—the Air Force also needs to retire its aging airplanes.

“The truth is the Air Force needs things like electric warfare, battle management, intelligence, cyber capabilities, all of these things,” Kendall said at the Ash Carter Exchange defense conference May 9. “It doesn’t just need airplanes.”

“As the character of warfare changes,” Kendall added, the Air Force will become just as much about those new systems as “traditional platforms.”

“We’re having to divest some of those to free up resources to move forward,” Kendall said. “There’s been resistance to that in the past.”

That means the service—and lawmakers—have to make hard choices, Kendall said, while acknowledging there are also political realities that come into play.

“I know it’s hard, locally, in particular, to divest aircraft,” Kendall said.

The Air Force needs to acknowledge that lawmakers do not want jobs and resources taken away from their constituents, and try to ensure it brings “similar value to the local communities” as it modernizes, Kendall said.

The service has made progress on that front recently. After years of Congress saying “No” to the Air Force’s attempts to divest some of its aging fleet, the legislature has started to relent some, going along with the service’s requests to retire platforms like the A-10 “Warthog” and E-3 AWACS.

In fiscal 2024, the Air Force plans to retire 310 aircraft, including even more A-10s and E-3s, as well as 32 older F-22s. The F-22s in particular are aircraft the Air Force unsuccessfully tried to retire last year, facing pushback on and off Capitol Hill. But Kendall said the A-10s and E-3s were “increasingly obsolete and very difficult to maintain” and the early F-22s “are not fully combat capable.”

If it can, Kendall said, the Air Force wants to replace retired aircraft with similar systems, such as replacing an aging fighter unit with new fighter aircraft. If not, Kendall said the Air Force wants to convince lawmakers that a new unit is something with “longevity.”

For example, as the service gets rid of A-10s at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., it plans to stand up a new “Power Projection Wing.”

This year, Kendall sounded optimistic that the service’s reasoning and messaging is getting through.

“I’m going to express my appreciation to the Congress,” he said.

For now, the Department of the Air Force has wrapped up the unveiling of its fiscal 2024 budget to Congress, including advocating for aircraft divestitures. After fielding a myriad of questions from lawmakers during a series of hearings, Kendall has one main takeaway: Congress must act.

“Now we’re going to wait,” Kendall said, reiterating his frustration at political gridlock—which Kendall said will almost certainly lead to a delayed budget of at least three months.

Kendall came into his role in 2021 with the goal to modernize the Air Force and build out the Space Force to meet the threat of China. His seven “operational imperatives” have shaped that modernization effort over the past two years, and the department’s budget is now in alignment with those goals, he said, with aircraft divestitures making up one piece.

“These are operating problems we have to solve to be able to be effective against the threat that is emerging and moving forward fairly rapidly,” Kendall said. “China is not wasting any time.”

“They’ve surprised me a couple of times,” said Kendall, who spent decades as a Pentagon official before returning as Air Force Secretary. “They’re not waiting for us to do things. They’re thinking ahead and moving forward. We have to be competitive.”

[James1978]

US Air Force wants drone wingmen to bring ‘mass’ airpower on a budget
By Stephen Losey
May 11, 2023

WASHINGTON — If the Air Force has to fight a major adversary such as China in years to come, a top general said, it must bring “mass” in its airpower — without breaking the bank.

But piloted fighters alone won’t be enough to maintain the United States’ prized air superiority, Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said in an interview with Defense News. Key aircraft in its fleet such as the F-15C are rapidly aging, and the service is on track to retire more than twice as many fighters as it buys over the next five years.

That’s why Moore said it’s vital for the Air Force to build and field a planned fleet of at least 1,000 drone wingmen to augment its piloted fighter fleet. And the service is working to pull together industry ideas for so-called collaborative combat aircraft and its own experiments to figure out how to make this a reality.

“The picture here is changing, and what’s changing the picture is CCAs,” Moore said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has made it clear creating CCAs is one of his top priorities, and the service is starting to sort out the details of how it will fold drone wingmen into its fleet and use them in a future conflict. In March, Kendall said he ordered the service’s planners to assume the Air Force will have 1,000 CCAs, though the final number could differ from that estimate.

Key lawmakers this spring aired their concerns to top Air Force leaders about the state of the Air Force’s fighter fleet and its plans for fighters in years to come.

In a March 29 hearing of the House Armed Services subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, pointed to Air Force plans to divest 801 fighters by 2028 while bringing on less than half that with 345 F-35s and F-15EXs.

Moore said in that hearing most aircraft slated for retirement are F-15Cs and A-10 Warthogs, along with some older and less capable F-22s and F-16s.

The Air Force’s F-15C and D Eagles are rapidly aging, as their withdrawal from Kadena Air Base, Japan, in recent months has shown, and their numbers are dwindling. The service’s planned Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter platforms won’t arrive until the end of the decade, at best, and will be very pricey, with each system expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And while the Air Force continues to bring on more F-35As, the service has cut its original plans to purchase 144 F-15EXs down to 104.

Wittman, the subcommittee’s chairman, warned continuing on such a “glide slope,” while key adversaries such as China continue to invest in fighter airpower, could turn America into a mere “regional power.”

Moore said that CCAs will be vital to delivering the kind of airpower that will be necessary to face off against a nation with a military comparable to the United States.

But trying to reach that level of airpower with crewed fighters alone would be prohibitively expensive, Moore said, prompting the Air Force’s turn to drone wingmen.

“We have to come up with a way to create affordable mass, and that’s where CCAs came in, and that’s why the numbers are so high,” Moore said, referring to plans envisioning a 1,000-drone fleet. “You can’t just talk about F-35s, and F-15Es, and F-15EXs and F-16s, and call that the enterprise. You have to add CCAs in.”

And the service’s proposed budget for 2024 requests money to make that planning a reality. The service asked for nearly $50 million to start a program called Project Venom that aims to refine autonomous software of the kind that could fly CCAs, and $69 million to launch an Experimental Operations Unit where officials would start developing the tactics and procedures to incorporate CCAs into a squadron.

Industry ideas for CCAs
Moore said that the experimental unit will take advantage of the Air Force’s novel acquisition approach for CCAs.

Usually, he explained, the Air Force first spells out a program’s requirements to industry, which will then come up with something that meets those requirements.

But this time, Moore said, Kendall deliberately told the Air Force not to start by spelling out requirements, and instead to ask industry what was possible. And the Experimental Operations Unit will take companies’ ideas and explore them further, Moore said, figuring out how to incorporate them into day-to-day squadron operations.

Moore said the Air Force expects to have concrete ideas from vendors on the attributes of CCAs within a few years, maybe sooner “if we get lucky.”

The service will then start experimenting with drone prototypes and determine what level of autonomy is possible.

“That will be fundamentally a part of the employment concept as well,” Moore said. “If they’re truly autonomous, if we can get there, then that opens up some additional possibilities. If they are somewhat autonomous, then that would lead you more to a ‘loyal wingman’ concept, or CCAs being part of a formation with manned fighters. We’ll just have to see how that plays out.”

Project Venom, in which autonomous software will be installed in six F-16s for experimentation, will help shape the course of those future experiments on industry aircraft, he said.

And there are many questions that still need to be sorted out once the Air Force has industry’s ideas in hand, Moore said. For example, will CCAs be an integral part of a squadron and deploy together, or will they be a separate unit that deploys on their own? Will they launch from the same bases as crewed fighters or from different locations?

“These are questions that don’t yet have answers, because we don’t yet know the attributes of the CCA that will come,” Moore said. “We’ll work all that out as those attributes begin to crystallize. And I think the answers will become relatively obvious based on the airplanes, but we don’t have them yet.”

Some drones could have multiple applications ranging from strike, intelligence collection or jamming, for example. “The one that we’re focusing on first is the ability for CCAs to augment the manned fighter force as shooters, so that’ll be first,” Moore said.

As for industry interest, some of the combat aviation segment’s largest companies have already expressed interest, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Kratos and General Atomics, according to Moore.

“I think we see multiple pathways to what we’re trying to get to,” he said. “I don’t think there’s only one pathway, and we’re not dependent on a single company.”

[James1978]

I didn't realize the B-2 fleet hasn't flown in nearly six months.

Air Force: B-2 Operators Not ‘Sitting On Their Hands’ as Safety Pause Continues
May 12, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Air Force leaders in charge of the nation’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber fleet say they have been working behind the scenes to keep the aircraft ready—even as a “safety pause” on flying approaches six months in length.

A quarter-century after its introduction, the B-2 program is still shrouded in secrecy. But officials shed light on the steps they are taking to keep the aircraft, aircrews, maintainers, and weapons personnel up to speed as the service works to fix the problem that has led to a suspension of flight operations.

“We are ensuring that we are getting after readiness and that when the fleet safety pause is over, that we’re able to bring this bird back in the air in a manner commensurate with what the American public would expect from us,” Col. Daniel Diehl, 509th Bomb Wing commander at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The pause began in December on the order of Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, after a B-2 was damaged after an emergency landing at Whiteman—the only base to host combat B-2s, which are assigned to the 509th Bomb Wing and its Air National Guard associate, the 131st Bomb Wing.

That incident, which temporarily shut down the lone runway at the base, was the second B-2 mishap in a little over a year.

In September 2021, a B-2 at Whiteman had a runway excursion after a part in its landing gear failed. The aircraft was sent for repairs to Northrop Grumman’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif., where it was manufactured. Air Force officials have not publicly disclosed what caused the most recent incident or the extent of the damage to the B-2.

The pause in flight operations left one B-2 parked at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, which shares runways with Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. An AFGSC spokesman said the remaining 19 B-2s are currently at Whiteman, one of which is a test aircraft normally based at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Leaders say the aircraft are still flyable should the bomber be called upon to meet an urgent need. And the B-2’s main mission is an existential one: nuclear deterrence. But Bussiere’s goal is to find out what caused the incident with one of the military’s priciest platforms and ensure it does not happen again.

In the meantime, the Air Force is getting after readiness while aircrews are working to maintain their proficiency.

With aircraft not flying, the ground crew has had more time to spend with the airframe and perform checks, including of their low-observable stealth coating. Some B-2s have already had parts replaced as a result of the checks that are not directly related to the reasons for the safety pause.

“All military aircraft have a list of discrepancies—maintenance items that typically don’t have the capacity to take care of,” said Col. Bruce T. Guest, commander of the 509th Maintenance Group. ”The B-2 is no exception, and so we’ve been able to deliberately address and whittle down our list of discrepancies. It’s no small feat that improves things like reliability.”

B-2 aircrews, for their part, have been flying in T-38 trainers and spending more time in simulators. Even before the pause, pilots kept up their flying chops in T-38 trainers and used simulators. But the number of repetitions on both has increased.

“We’re fortunate here at Whiteman to have very realistic simulators, which allow us to replicate the flight environment very well,” said Col. Geoffrey M. Steeves, the commander of the 509th Operations Group.

“We’ve got a synthetic environment that we’re able to train, and that allows us to actually put an air refueling tanker in front of a B-2 and go do our air refueling in a very realistic setting,” Steeves added. “These simulators are all wired together across the country, so it’s not uncommon for us to be able to be working with a synthetic AWACS, for example, or synthetic fighters that are elsewhere.”

Simulated B-2 missions have extended to some of the Air Force’s most important exercises such as Red Flag, used for combat training, and the U.S. Strategic Command’s annual Global Thunder nuclear readiness exercise.

“Even though we didn’t see airplanes flying at the end of that you normally would see, we still participated fully in that exercise—everything every other base was accomplishing,” Diehl said of Global Thunder. He added that Whiteman was involved in other exercises.

Since the first B-2 was unveiled in 1988, 21 aircraft have been produced. One was destroyed in a crash at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam in 2008, and the service has gone to great lengths to repair previously damaged B-2s. It is unclear what will happen to the B-2 damaged in December.

With only 20 B-2s in the fleet and a smaller number available to fly at a given time, the operational tempo of the fleet was demanding. Now officials say they have more time to attend to maintenance and readiness issues. But they still would like to get back in the air.

“Readiness for us is really twofold: the ability of the pilots to conduct the mission and the ability of the airplane to conduct the mission,” Diehl said. “It’s not that the pilots have been sitting on their hands.”

Eventually, the B-2 fleet will return to skies, officials said—conducting all of its missions from flyovers of the Rose Bowl to nuclear deterrence. But Diehl acknowledged the pause, even if it will ultimately lead to a safer fleet, was not a risk-free endeavor.

“There’s a subjective piece,” Diehl said. “I would argue we are just as ready, if not more ready than normal, to conduct the nation’s business. But there’s still risk associated with returning to fly. I think you would be surprised if I said there was no risk with putting pilots back in an airplane that they haven’t flown for five months.”

[James1978]

Will SecAF’s Budget-Flexibility Proposal Die on the Hill?
Frank Kendall wants Congress to allow service secretaries to launch new efforts as threats arise, not when budget season rolls around.
By Audrey Decker
May 11, 2023

The Air Force secretary is asking for more budget flexibility from Congress. But his suggestions likely won’t fly in this year’s defense policy bill.

A legislative proposal sent to Congress on April 12 would allow Air Force, Navy, and Army secretaries to start a weapons program if they are “surprised technologically” by a threat or see a “great opportunity” for new technology—without waiting for a lengthy budget cycle, said Frank Kendall.

“It's a free year and a half or so that we're giving away to the other side while we wait for our bureaucratic process to play out. And the Congress would still have full oversight. We would not be able to go beyond preliminary design review without their approval on a budget cycle,” Kendall said Tuesday during the Ash Carter Exchange hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project.

Air Force officials said they’re not proposing a slush fund, but rather want the service secretaries to be able to independently execute a “reprioritization within the year of execution”—that is, taking money from under-executing or low-priority efforts to fund something else. The proposal would expand the existing Rapid Acquisition Authority, which enables the Defense Department to reprogram funds, to allow service secretaries to start new programs.

The proposal would limit the secretaries’ funding moves to a total of $300 million per year, all subject to the defense secretary’s approval.

There is “interest” from Capitol Hill, Air Force officials said, but they couldn’t discuss the likelihood of it being included in this year’s defense policy bill. However, Kendall, who has been floating the proposal at recent events, acknowledged on Tuesday that there will be “some resistance” from Congress.

It’s unlikely that lawmakers will greenlight this initiative because they don’t want the Pentagon to start developing a new program before they have an opportunity to vote on it, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

“Congress might say, on the budgeting side, you've got tools, you've got reprogramming authorities you could use or ask for, you could ask for us to give you an anomaly on a continuing resolution if there is one. Or you could, if it's important enough, operate under the existing rapid acquisition authorities to go spend money on a new program,” Clark said.

And on the acquisition side, Clark said Congress has already given the Pentagon new authorities to buy systems, such as the Middle Tier of Acquisition.

“Fundamentally, it's sort of at odds with how Congress believes it should be exercising its oversight responsibilities,” Clark said.

Echoing Clark’s concerns, one congressional source said there’s “possible hope” for the proposal to get into next year’s defense policy bill, but it won’t happen this year.

While promoting the new initiative, Kendall has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of a continuing resolution, which could hurt a dozen new weapon projects the Air Force wants to start in this year’s budget—including drones that would fly alongside manned fighters into conflict called collaborative combat aircraft.

However, the Air Force could have pursued collaborative combat aircraft under the Middle Tier of Acquisition, Clark said, but instead they chose to do it through the traditional avenue of purchasing weapons.

“And now they're frustrated because they were saying it was going to take a long time to get that through your congressional approval, but they could easily change course and say we're going to do this under the Middle Tier of Acquisition and field this capability right away,” Clark said.

Lawmakers have been briefed about the proposal, and Air Force officials said they’re working through questions with Congress.

“Congress will adjudicate the secretary’s recommendation with the seriousness it requires, while evaluating what new value it would provide outside of options the department could otherwise pursue urgent and compelling programs like the MTA or rapid acquisition pathways,” said Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services’s tactical air and land forces subcommittee.

Regardless of Congress’s decision on the initiative, Wittman said he “appreciates” Kendall’s focus on speed.

The acceleration of new technology is essential to deter adversaries, said Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., ranking member of the subcommittee, and he looks forward to “receiving the details of Kendall’s formal legislative proposal when ready.”

[James1978]

Georgia base welcomes first ‘BACN’ communications relay plane
By Rachel S. Cohen
May 12, 2023

Robins Air Force Base recently brought home its first E-11A airborne communications relay plane, a major step toward overhauling the Georgia base’s slate of combat jobs.

The jet’s April 24 arrival brings Robins closer to the start of flying at its new 18th Airborne Command and Control Squadron, created in February as the U.S.-based hub of the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node fleet. The base formally announced its arrival in a press release Thursday.

BACN is one of four missions set to replace the retiring fleet of E-8C Joint STARS ground target tracking planes at Robins over the next several years.

The aircraft — a fleet of Bombardier Global 6000 business jets built by Learjet and outfitted with a suite of military antennas and radios by Northrop Grumman — relay information between military aircraft and ground troops that are too far apart to contact each other directly.

“We basically extend the range of a lot of communication systems, be they radio or data link, and then we allow people that have different types of radios and data links to be able to communicate with each other that otherwise would not be able to,” squadron commander Lt. Col. Scott Sevigny said in the release.

The squadron plans to employ nine BACN aircraft and nearly 300 active duty airmen. It reports to the 319th Reconnaissance Wing at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota, the Air Force said in 2021. It aims to be fully operational by fiscal 2027.

All nine planes will be based out of Robins and then deploy as the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Communications Squadron at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. BACN planes are typically in such high demand that they used Kandahar Airfield as their home base until the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.

The Air Force owns six BACN aircraft and plans to grow to a fleet of nine by the end of 2025. It has received half of the six jets it purchased under a $465 million contract with Learjet in 2021.

BACN payloads, which also fly on the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, were created in response to the communication failures that led to the deaths of three U.S. Navy SEALs during “Operation Red Wings” in Afghanistan in 2005.

The relay aircraft offer the crucial ability to direct troops on the ground in areas with dangerous terrain and little other communications infrastructure, ensuring that American service members can successfully finish their missions and get out alive.

That mission can put BACN pilots in harm’s way, too. In 2020, two airmen died in a crash landing while trying to set down their damaged, gliding E-11A in Taliban-controlled territory in eastern Afghanistan. An Air Force investigation concluded that a broken fan blade caused one engine to fail, prompting the pilots to shut off the other engine.

In addition to BACN, the Air Force plans to set up another command-and-control squadron, a group focused on electromagnetic spectrum warfare, and an office to handle the Air Force’s acquisition of future communications technologies known as the Advanced Battle Management System.

The units are seen as more resilient and relevant in future wars — particularly, in a possible conflict between the U.S. and China — than the service’s fleet of 16 five-decade-old Joint STARS planes.

“We are heading into a new era that will set up our warfighters for success against adversaries,” base commander Col. Lindsay Droz said in the release. “BACN’s arrival at Robins is just the beginning of many other mission milestones coming to this installation.”

[James1978]

U.S. Shields B-21 Bomber Bases From China Or Other Foreign Encroachments
Craig Hooper
May 8, 2023

In a move to better track potential surveillance activity near sensitive U.S. bases, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has named eight military sites as candidates for enhanced vetting, adding to about 200 sites already covered under older legislation from 2018. For each of the 8 new sites, CFIUS would evaluate reported foreign property acquisitions within 100 miles of each base.

The sites targeted for additional oversight include a mix of Air Force manufacturing, training, or other long-range strike, command-and-control, or reconnaissance facilities. In broad strokes, the new measures appear largely targeted at securing the manufacturing, training and basing foundations for the future B-21 Raider strategic bomber and tightening up surveillance of foreign property investments around F-35 training sites and other Air Force training facilities.

The proposed sites include Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, a well-known production site for the B-21 as well as other advanced—and often classified—aircraft.

In Texas and Arizona, the Air Force training centers at Lackland Air Force Base (Part of Joint Base San Antonio), Laughlin Air Force Base, and Luke Air Force Base are new entrants on the list of monitored facilities, suggesting that the Air Force is concerned that training activities at those three bases could reveal mission-compromising materials and methods. Luke Air Force Base—a center of F-35 Lightning II training—also includes the large Barry M. Goldwater Range, a Southern Arizona training area that provides fliers with almost 57,000 cubic miles of airspace.

But the primary focus of the new CFIUS-covered sites appears to be on protecting key B-21 infrastructure. The B-1B Lancer strategic bomber bases at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas and Ellsworth Air Force Base in Box Elder South Dakota were reserved for additional scrutiny. Both bases are already set to house the future B-21 bomber, and, with Ellsworth long identified as the primary home for the new bomber, expanded surveillance measures are somewhat overdue.

Ellsworth Air Force Base also includes the enormous Powder River Training Complex, offering pilots access to airspace over North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming—an area almost the size of Indiana—for practice. The Complex has methodically expanded to accommodate America’s new aircraft and advanced new tactics, increasing the range size and upping the maximum altitude limits to 52,000 feet. If CFIUS monitoring extends to the associated Belle Fourche Electronic Scoring Site for the training complex and other ground-based emitter sites scattered throughout the training range, property sales will be monitored through much of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.

Another designated monitoring site, Grand Forks Air Force Base, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, operates RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones and helps maintain the High Frequency Global Communications System necessary for critical U.S. command-and-control activities.

Over the past few years, Grand Forks has become something of a poster child for America’s unwieldy risk-assessment and counter-surveillance practices. A motley crew of national security stakeholders have waged a lonely struggle to keep the Chinese Communist Party-linked Fufeng Group from building a 370-acre wet corn milling plant some 12 miles from the base. As Grand Forks was not already included in the CFIUS-covered list of sensitive military sites, it was a real challenge for America to cancel the project, even though the U.S. Air force declared the investment a “significant threat to national security with both near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area”.

Of all the new sites, Camp Dodge, the Iowa National Guard Joint Force Headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa is an apparent outlier. The deceptively sleepy base, an Army training center since the early days of World War I, sits near the Des Moines recreation center of Saylorville Lake, and seems more likely to be overrun with weekend motor-boaters than sophisticated weekend warriors.

Camp Dodge also appears to be the only National Guard facility included in the extended range list. However, given Camp Dodge’s location in the center of Iowa, CFIUS now able to examine virtually all property transfers between Iowa City and Council Bluffs. It gives Iowa’s rules limiting foreign ownership of farmland a particular boost, offering a means for locals to transfer the burden of evaluating suspect foreign land transactions to an already overtasked and understaffed agency.

CFIUS: A Powerful Surveillance Tool Or Paper Tiger?
CFIUS is a young bureaucratic entity, and the office’s ultimate contribution to national security is unknown. It is far too weak to make real changes. On paper, CFIUS looks good, but, in practice, CFIUS is only as good as the personnel used to staff the organization’s assessment work. CFIUS itself, as an organization, appears to be limited to assessing voluntary reports of impending property transfers rather than actively tracking, assessing, and acting upon suspicious foreign property developments—base encroachments or suspect investments near critical infrastructure—in general.

Since 2020, CFIUS has been authorized to review transactions involving the purchase, lease, or concession of property to a “foreign person” near several types of national security sites. These particularly sensitive sites range from active Air Force ballistic missile fields, bases and major annexes containing units from the Air Force Air Combat Command, Air Force Research Laboratories, NORAD facilities, and/or Air Force communications/command assets. Controlled sites include Army and Navy bases, ammunition plants, centers for excellence, research laboratories, and Army Combat Training Centers, long range radar sites, and major range and test facilities.

While a number military facilities are sensitive enough to merit CFIUS review of reported property transactions within a mile from the base fence line, only a handful are sensitive enough to require “extended range” review of up to 100 miles. Right now, thirty-two bases and ranges along with three ballistic missile bases demand the extended range review. The additional eight will bring that total up to forty.

But adding new facilities poses a real challenge for CFIUS. CFIUS regulations give CFIUS personnel a very limited amount of time to investigate property transactions—much of the investigative work is contracted, and, given the price per hour, the CFIUS investigations will be, at best, cursory products worked up by very junior personnel.

On top of the challenges of adequately investigating “voluntary” reports of a foreign property transaction, penalties for non-compliance seem very weak. An omission can result in a fine of up to $250,000. Mitigation violations—in the seemingly rare event they are detected and investigated—are also limited to either $250,000 or the value of the transaction, whichever is greater.

In the world of espionage, a $250,000 fine is chickenfeed. The Russians paid some $1.4 million to high-level FBI double agent Richard Hanssen. Getting a fence-line perch to observe, collect, and potentially interfere with critical U.S. national security activities is worth far, far more.

It’s not all bad. It is, of course, a good step forward to monitor property transactions near critical national security sites. But if transaction reports are voluntary, and the organization charged to monitor these transactions are not provided sufficient tools, time, and talent to investigate transactions, CFIUS risks becoming a paper tiger.

Put bluntly, CFIUS needs to be empowered to become a far more fast-moving and agile entity. It needs to look beyond a few bases, too. All foreign property transactions in the U.S. should be tracked, and CFIUS investigators empowered to dig into data to see where any anomalous foreign—or just merely foreign-linked—transactions might lead.

[James1978]

Air Force Scrambles to Address Officer Training School Instructor Shortage

12 May 2023
Military.com | By Thomas Novelly

The Air Force is scrambling to overcome a significant shortage in the number of instructors at its only Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and has resorted to pulling staff members back into the field as well as combining classes.

Maj. Nate Roesler, a spokesman for Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, told Military.com that the school is "currently at 53% of what our production requirement demands” for instructors.

The issue was raised in a September 2022 memo shared with Military.com that said officer training school classes had to be combined in 2023 "due to historically low instructor manning."

"To mitigate our near-term manpower shortfalls, we consolidated OTS instructors from the two training squadrons, returned some officers from staff positions to line instructor positions, and therefore we were able to maintain an acceptable level of production," Roesler said.

By pulling in additional people and combining classes, the school was able to maintain its 14:1 student to instructor ratio.

There are multiple factors contributing to the shortage of OTS instructors.

The first is that there simply aren't enough applicants, as many airmen don't consider it a coveted position. A 2019 Air Force press release even admitted that "many see instructor duty as a career killer." That prompted the service to make a change where there was a more intense vetting position for the role and started to include a stint as an instructor as part of officer selection briefs, the summary of an airman's career used to evaluate them for promotions.

Another factor leading to the shortage is an Air Force-wide problem. As the service scrambles to fill many career fields amid a recruiting crisis, fewer airmen are receiving permanent change of station orders to become OTS instructors with the service desperate to fill a variety of job needs across the force.

"Both the Air Force and Space Force are working through a wide range of force management challenges to ensure we have the right numbers of officers in the right specialties to win a peer fight, and we face the same challenges as the operational Air Force when it comes to filling our positions with a diverse set of talent," Roesler said.

Being an Air Force OTS instructor is akin to being a military training instructor for the enlisted ranks -- training cadets and turning them into leaders, often drilling with them, answering questions and setting the standard for what an ideal officer looks like.

Roesler said the situation will improve slightly with the next permanent change of station cycle this summer, when the school will gain more instructors than it loses, but it will still face an overall shortage.

"While we work through adjustments to how we deliver OTS, we're working diligently to ensure accurate information is received by potential instructors regarding the nature of instructor duties, the powerful developmental opportunities associated with serving at OTS, and what an amazing opportunity it is to train, develop, and educate the next generation of Air and Space Force officers," Roesler said.

The August OTS class, which had previously been combined with another course due to the instructor shortage, has now been moved all the way back to October, according to Air University.

Roesler said this change was so staff could pause and take a look at implementing changes to OTS courses "which we are poised to execute beginning in [fiscal year 2024]."

Further details on those changes were not immediately offered by Air University.

The ongoing Air Force's recruiting crisis could lead to shortages in a wide variety of career fields.

An April 4 email from Air Force Recruiting Service Commander Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, which was leaked on social media and has been verified as authentic by the service, detailed a dire shortfall in several career fields and predicted nearly 3,000 jobs that could see vacancies.

Thomas estimated that there could be "1,800 empty maintainer jobs, 700 empty defender jobs, 300 in munitions and 100 in fuel" if the recruiting environment doesn't get better.

"In the coming years, our brothers and sisters in arms will be asked to carry the burden intended for teammates who never joined our team," Thomas wrote. "Airmen will almost certainly be asked to work longer hours, cover more shifts and make sacrifices in their personal lives to meet the mission demands essential to our national security."

The service, after barely meeting its active-duty recruiting goals last year, announced in March it was projecting a 10% shortfall for this year. That's the equivalent of around 5,000 people, nearly the total of all the airmen at the 366th Fighter Wing stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. It predicted even more shortfalls for the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard.

The Air Force Recruiting Service has pointed to numerous headwinds that have made it hard to bring in new members: Americans are seeing some of the lowest unemployment rates in more than 50 years, and the Pentagon has released studies showing that only 23% of U.S. youth are eligible to serve right now, due to obesity and other issues.

[James1978]

The Air Force reimagines its tech schools
By Rachel S. Cohen
May 15, 2023

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas — Nearly eight decades after the Air Force’s founding, the schools that prepare airmen for their military jobs are due for an overhaul.

Air Education and Training Command wants to modernize its technical training enterprise for the 150,000 airmen who take courses across more than 100 specialties each year. That requires a new look at everything from what students should be learning and how, and the environment in which they learn it, the three-star general in charge argues.

When airmen join the military, they take a step back to a learning environment of decades past, AETC Commander Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson said in a recent interview at the organization’s headquarters here.

“Most of the airmen who join the Air Force today have come up … through high school and [middle school], using technology in a way that we don’t in the Air Force,” he said.

It’s more than a lack of iPads: It’s training mechanics on engines that look nothing like those they’ll see on the job. It’s holding classes in workshops without enough outlets to power the tech they do have. And it’s piles and piles of paper manuals.

Most technical training is run out of four installations: JB San Antonio, Goodfellow Air Force Base and Sheppard AFB, Texas; and Keesler AFB, Mississippi. Courses can last anywhere from six weeks to a year and a half, depending on the specialty.

Tech school is typically an airman’s first introduction to a career field, and also provides their transition between boot camp and everyday life in an Air Force unit. But the gap between those classrooms and the real world is getting wider.

Robinson wants to digitize tech school curriculum, with on-demand content that students can pull up anytime. He’d like to expand the use of virtual reality, which gives airmen more access to planes and other equipment than they might get in real life. And he hopes to make classrooms and dormitories more collaborative, Internet-connected spaces.

The changes would mirror years of work at basic military training and undergraduate pilot courses to move faster, adopt new technology and adapt to the modern ways of war.

“We’re pretty confident that’ll allow them to become qualified in the skill sets [and] competencies they have to be qualified in … at equal or better levels — and faster,” Robinson said.

Years of revamping pilot training has taught the Air Force how to “design a syllabus with the end in mind,” Robinson said.

That aims to build student comprehension rather than checking boxes as they move through the material. Teachers would be facilitators, not lecturers.

The approach Robinson envisions can also be cheaper than ordering advanced simulators that cost millions of dollars and doesn’t take operational jets and other assets away from their daily missions. And, he added, speedier training could also help replace airmen who are killed in combat, if an intense shooting war breaks out.

Allowing students to learn and interact via tablets, phones and laptops is particularly important for a generation that spent much of the past few years in distance learning.

“You definitely do see a difference from airmen from pre-COVID, to airmen that went to high school during COVID and then joined the military, and now we’re expecting them to be good at interacting with their peers,” said Tech. Sgt. Clarissa Scott, a military training leader with the 344th Training Squadron. “We are definitely meeting them where they’re at with technology, and giving them the space to, one, make mistakes, but then also learn from those mistakes.”

Airmen in the “Fundamentals of Aircraft Maintenance” course at Sheppard told Air Force Times that the class — which uses videos and VR for about three-quarters of its lessons since first piloting the idea in 2020 — has helped them study more thoroughly, efficiently and collaboratively.

Students can rewatch videos at home until they understand the material, or pull apart a virtual engine inside a VR headset. The reinforcement those tools provide can make the difference between passing or failing. And it’s easier to update that software to evolve with the times.

“There’s a lot of information inside the old paper booklets that … wasn’t pertinent to what was actually being tested,” Airman 1st Class Ray Gonzalez said. “Having the tablets that are actually slides, verbatim, of what the instructor is showing really helped to focus actually on what was needed.”

Other courses are gamifying their lessons to encourage more interaction between students and forcing them to think through real-world planning. Instead of listening to a lecture, airmen can move their desks to work in groups and better understand what airmen in other fields need.

First Lt. Kimberly Espinoza, a munitions maintenance officer from Japan’s Kadena Air Base, has seen that difference firsthand. She spoke to Air Force Times during a course at Sheppard that brings together aircraft and munitions maintainers to game out logistical scenarios they may face, leaving students feeling better prepared.

“When I came here in the past for tech school, a lot of it was … ‘death by PowerPoint,’” she said. “Here … we’ll have a lesson and, immediately after the lesson, go into an exercise of, ‘OK, how do you use this in your units?’”

The path forward
Robinson declined to say what an overall timeline might be for bringing tech schools into the 21st century, or its benchmarks for determining success. Over the next 18 months, he wants to lay out the basic skills that airmen in each career field must learn. Changes focused on those competencies will follow.

The goal is to deliver newly trained airmen to their first operational bases with as many of those skills as possible.

Robinson suggested AETC will first tackle updates for maintainers, followed by firefighters and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance specialists. Second Air Force, the subordinate organization in charge of basic and technical training, will set those priorities, he said.

Turning toward technological solutions can create another problem: finding qualified simulator instructors to run them. Robinson hopes to turn to remote teaching staff who can run that software from anywhere in the world.

He estimates that tech schools have about 80% of the staff they need. He’d like to grow that to around 90%.

Col. Lauren Courchaine, head of the 37th Training Wing, which manages the training enterprise at Joint Base San Antonio, wants to give instructors the resources they need to thrive, and to return to their previous jobs better than they left them.

Some airmen are wary of becoming instructors because they fear falling behind in their professional skills and being passed over for promotion.

“The skills that they learn in this environment, in terms of leading such a diverse group of people across different [specialties], are the traits that I really hope we can implement into the Air Force as we look at what the next fight could be,” Courchaine said.

Rethinking the ‘pipeline’
Improving tech school is key to reaching a broader goal: easing the transition between boot camp, technical training and an airman’s first operational base.

In September, staffers from Air Force Recruiting Command, basic training and technical training joined curriculum writers to explore how to stretch lessons across each phase, Courchaine said.

“Where I see the biggest breakdown is not necessarily in a Second Air Force pipeline, in terms of BMT or technical training, it’s that jump between technical training and the first base,” she said.

She envisions two things an airman should get at basic training and carry with them throughout their career. One is a piece of technology, like a tablet, to hold what they learn in school and the Air Force regulations and resources.

The other is their airmanship habits, from respectful interaction with their teammates to cyber hygiene online. Air Force instructors should show, not tell, students how to embody values like emotional resilience and open communication, Courchaine said.

Robinson also wants to improve at teaching airmen to think on their feet and make decisions on their own. That’s driven by the Air Force’s move toward more flexible combat deployments with smaller field teams than they might have at an established base.

Those lessons start during boot camp and have begun to spill over into tech school, like emphasizing new ways of problem solving at the intelligence community’s schoolhouse at Goodfellow AFB, Robinson said.

And he has publicly mentioned the idea of getting away from a traditional training “pipeline” altogether.

Ideally, the Air Force could abandon the student cohorts that start and end at the same time, and let people graduate at their own pace. That gets complicated because of how military training is funded, and because operational units need a reliable flow of new airmen as others leave.

“We can actually get them to their first base quicker, which I think matters most to the airmen,” Robinson said. “You want them developing camaraderie, esprit de corps, and that sense of belonging … at their mission unit.”

To get there, the right infrastructure has to be in place: high-bandwidth, wireless Internet connections in classrooms and dorms, a strong electric grid with enough outlets, and workspaces that facilitate collaboration.

That helps accomplish more than homework. Without digital connectivity, airmen are cut off from the modes of bonding and relaxation they enjoy most.

Courchaine recalled meeting one airman with a Snapchat “streak” — the consecutive number of days that two users swap photos or videos on the app — over 3,500 days long. And she pointed to her own kids’ gaming habits.

“If you want to go play PlayStation 5 in your dorm room, you should be able to play PlayStation 5 in your dorm room,” she said. “That’s how they blow off steam and talk to all of their friends.”

Right now, leaders are focusing on curriculum more than culture. But updating tech school policies like its 10 p.m. curfew, or its visitor rules, could appeal to the current generation of airmen that now skews older than in the past.

Leaders said those areas are ripe for reconsideration, but that they have to maintain discipline among young airmen.

“Your frontal lobe is not fully developed — let me help you. But there’s also a piece where, yes, in my mind, you’re still in training,” Courchaine said. “Make dumb mistakes here instead.”

[James1978]

Second WC-135R delivered to Offutt AFB
May 14, 2023 by alert5

Offutt Air Force Base has recently received the second of three refurbished WC-135R surveillance aircraft, commonly known as “nuke-sniffers”. Tail number 64-14831 arrived at the base after being converted by defense contractor L3Harris under the supervision of the U.S.Air Force’s “Big Safari” program. The new aircraft is part of the 55th Wing’s mission to detect atmospheric radiation, particularly from events such as North Korean weapons tests or nuclear submarine bases in the Russian Arctic, in support of the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The arrival of 64-14831 doubles the Wing’s ability to take air samples and detect atmospheric radiation. Prior to this, if an event happened in both the Pacific and Europe, the Wing had to choose which to respond to. With the new aircraft, they now have the option to respond to both. The mission, Constant Phoenix, is operated by the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron.

The WC-135R plays a critical role in detecting and monitoring atmospheric radiation. Equipped with sensing pods on each side of the fuselage over the wing, filters inside the pods can capture tiny particles from a nuclear blast, providing analysts with critical information about the composition of the bomb or other radiation source. The aircraft has also been fitted with compressors that channel air samples into tanks for further study.

The total cost of converting the three aircraft is $218 million, appropriated by Congress in 2018 and 2019 at the urging of Nebraska’s congressional delegation. The new aircraft replaces two 60-year-old WC-135s with outdated engines and avionics that had poor maintenance records. The aircraft’s prior service in the Air National Guard means they are in better shape than the 55th Wing workhorses, which typically rack up more flight hours and are maintained by active-duty Air Force mechanics.

The arrival of 64-14831 marks a significant upgrade for the 55th Wing’s mission to detect atmospheric radiation. With the new aircraft, the Wing is now better equipped to respond to events in multiple regions simultaneously, enhancing national security and safeguarding against potential threats.

Second WC-135R arrives at Offutt

Published May 12, 2023
By 55th Wing Public Affairs

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. -- Team Offutt officially welcomed it second WC-135R Constant Phoenix aircraft to its fleet as tail number 64-14831 arrived May 11, 2023.

The first WC-135R, tail number 64-14836, was delivered in July. This is the second of three the 55th Wing will receive as the Air Force modifies KC-135R Stratotankers to replace the now retired WC-135C/W fleet.

“We’re really pleased about what 836 has provided to us and very excited now to have a second jet,” said Lt. Col. Chris Crouch, 45th Reconnaissance Squadron commander. “831 adds capability and eases our decision-making burden as far as balancing operations and training.”

The WC fleet is operated by the 45th RS and 21st Surveillance Squadron, Det 1 to support national global atmospheric collection missions

“The fact that 831 matches 836 exactly from nose to tail, I expect us to have a much more fluid, efficient and better operations than what we had before with the two-legacy aircraft,” said Lt. Col. Sean Orme, Det. 1 commander. “I’m very excited.”

Originally delivered to the Air Force in 1964, tail 831 most recently flew with the Arizona Air National Guard’s 161st Air Refueling Wing.

After being modified by the 645th Aeronautical Systems Group, better known as Big Safari, 831 arrives to Offutt with a brand-new cockpit and the same four high bypass turbofan engines as 836 as well as the rest of the wing’s 135 fleet.

“We’re now able to go further with less support, which makes it easier to go to places we’ve never operated out of,” Crouch said. “These aircraft really expand our capabilities.”

“We’ve had multiple successful deployments with 836 and far fewer maintenance issues than we had with the old fleet,” Orme said. “We can do so much more now.”

The third and final WC-135R is scheduled to be delivered sometime this fall.

[Bob Dedmon]

Oregan ANG over does the clear water rinse! I think this jet is a Kadena refugee due to lack of tail decoration.

OANG mishap.jpg

[James1978]

Re. that F-15D in the picture above.

173rd Fighter Wing responds to F-15D mishap
May 16, 2023/ Press Release

The following is a press release from public affairs, 173rd Fighter Wing.

KINGSLEY FIELD, Ore. – A U.S. Air Force F-15D departed the runway during landing at approximately 3:15 p.m. yesterday at Kingsley Field in Klamath Falls, Ore. The aircraft was returning to base following a routine training mission.

Upon landing the aircraft left the paved surface and came to a stop in the Bureau of Reclamation irrigation canal at the south side of the runway.

“We don’t believe the aircraft is leaking any petroleum products based on our initial assessment of the water in the canal,” said Col. Micah Lambert, 173rd Fighter Wing vice commander. “Minimizing the environmental impact is one of our main priorities; we have taken precautionary measures and placed absorbent booms around the aircraft to prevent the flow of fuel, or other substances, downstream in the event there is a leakage.”

Lambert also said the wing is conducting ongoing water sampling to detect if there is a presence of petroleum products in the water.

The plane was assigned to the 173rd Fighter Wing, and there was one crew member on board. The F-15 instructor pilot exited the aircraft safely and was transported to Sky Lakes Medical Center as a precaution and for evaluation. He has since been released with minor injuries.

“We are so grateful that our pilot was able to walk away from this mishap,” said Lambert. “Our Team Kingsley responders acted quickly and with professionalism thanks to the extensive training and safety mindset of our team.”

Lambert noted that the wing is partnering with local authorities and federal agencies, to include the Bureau of Reclamation, to ensure the aircraft is safely removed from the canal.

A board of officers has been assigned to investigate the mishap. Additional updates will be provided as soon as they are available.