Air & Space Forces - October 2022

Take Aways from the Biggest Air, Space & Cyber Conference Ever 20
SKY WARRIOR
AFSOC’s Answer to the Armed
Overwatch Requirement 36
Freedom Ride: Pulling Out of AFG 52
Space-Based Missile Tracking 47
Chiefs Part III: Ryan & Goldfein 40
October 2022 $8
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STAFF
Publisher
Bruce A. Wright
Editor in Chief
October 2022 Vol. 105, No. 10
Tobias Naegele
Lockheed Martin illustration

Managing Editor
Juliette Kelsey
Chagnon
Editorial Director
John A. Tirpak
Assistant
Managing Editor
Chequita Wood
DEPARTMENTS FEATURES An artist
Senior Designer
illustration
2 Editorial: 18 Q&A: AFSOC Shifts Focus Dashton Parham
Let’s Do It Again depicts a Next- Digital Editor
Lt. Gen. James C. Slife, commander of Air Force Special Oper- Generation
By Tobias Naegele Amanda Miller
ations Command, sits down with AFA President Lt. Gen. Bruce Overhead Congressional
4 Letters Wright at AFA’s Air & Space Warfighters in Action event to Persistent Editor
discuss new direction and focus for AFSOC. Infrared (Next- Greg Hadley
4 Index to
Advertisers Gen OPIR) Pentagon Editor
36 Armed and Dangerous system in GEO Abraham Mahshie
8 Verbatim orbit. Production
By Hope Hodge Seck Manager
Next-Gen OPIR
10 Airframes In Sky Warden, AFSOC gains a new flexible hunter-killer. is intended Eric Chang Lee
to replace Photo Editor
20 World
Mike Tsukamoto
ASC22: Air 40 Chiefs Connected the Space
Force adapts Based Infrared
ACE; An emphasis
By Tobias Naegele
System (SBIRS),
on people; Flex- In the third of a four-part series, this month’s Chiefs
ibility for the future; beginning with Contributors
article features Gen. Michael E. Ryan (CSAF No. 16) and Gen.
Collaborative Com- its first launch Gabbe Kearney
bat Aircraft; Space David L. Goldfein (CSAF No. 21). in 2025. Patrick Reardon
Force Song; Christopher Stone
Mobility Manifesto;
Minuteman III 47 Enhanced Space-Based Missile Tracking
launch; and more ... By Christopher Stone
59 AFA in Action
America needs a more resilient missile warning system.
AFA Legends Tour;
Arnold Air Society/ 52 Freedom Ride ON THE COVER
Silver Wings interns ADVERTISING:
at the Pentagon By James C. Kitfield AT-802U/Air Tractor via Facebook
Kirk Brown
Director, Media
Inside the biggest noncombatant evacuation in U.S. Air Force
64 Faces of the Force Solutions
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[email protected]
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Air & Space Forces Magazine (ISSN 0730-6784) October 2022 (Vol. 105, No. 10) is published monthly, except for two double issues in January/February and June/July, by the
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OCTOBER 2022 AIRANDSPACEFORCES.COM 1

EDITORIAL
By Tobias Naegele
Let’s Do It Again
A
ir Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s keynote address at the Air unambiguous intent, Brown said, and “then get out of their way.” Trust
& Space Forces Association’s biggest-ever Air, Space & Cyber must extend down the chain. Expeditionary forces cannot be effective if
Conference last month looked to the past—and to the future. they must be directed at every moment. There is no clearer lesson from
“As I looked across the security horizon, three things crystallized for Russia’s failures in Ukraine than this.
me,” Brown said. “Uncontested Air Force dominance is not assured. This is also at the root of Agile Combat Employment (ACE), the Air
Good enough today will fail tomorrow. And we must collaborate within Force’s flexible operational concept. ACE will complicate the fight for the
and throughout to succeed.” enemy, but it requires Airmen to be more flexible and capable themselves.
Brown led his audience on a sweep through 75 years of history. The It means less specialization and more jacks-of-all-trades. It will be more
Wright Brothers, bicycle makers with a dream, proved human flight was demanding of everyone.
within their grasp. He cited Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold, Jimmy Doolittle, The Air Force’s new force generation model is also part of this culture
Amelia Earhart, and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. as visionaries who risked their change. Here, the issue is as much external as internal. Better planning
lives and careers to unlock possibilities and redefine warfare, commerce, is better for Airmen. But better communication to the rest of the Defense
and our very human existence ever after. Department leadership and to the combatant commands is crucial. The
“We proved that we could rise above any challenge,” Brown said. “We Air Force is not a perpetual fountain of capability.
proved that we were willing to take risk. And we proved that we could Forces have a life cycle, must be built up and prepared before they
solve any problem.”   become ready, and that readiness cannot be perpetually sustained for
America has also proven fickle. Our nation had repeatedly neglected every unit. Capabilities can be worn out, broken, and lost. USAF’s B-1
its military, and in particular its air forces, in peacetime, only to have to bombers flew so hard, so often, and for so long over the course of 20 years
reinvent them when conflict arose. The U.S. was not ready for war in of war in the Middle East that many are beyond repair. That capability
1941, despite warning signals that, in the light of history, seem obvious. and capacity, now lost, must be replaced.
Germany had been at war in Europe for more than two years by then. Flexible thinking is paramount in this new construct. Not only must
Japan was increasingly belligerent and isolated.   Airmen be ready and able to do whatever is asked—even if it’s not one’s
Today, as then, we can see a thuggish foe in Europe, where Russia’s trained specialty—but aircraft must be flexible, as well. Experiments with
war on Ukraine, though not going according to Vladimir Putin’s plan, palletized weapons from C-130s or C-17s, developing new electronic
could still expand to other formats. In Asia, China has replaced Japan as warfare and directed-energy capabilities, and adding those to uncon-
a dominant regional power eager to assert its dominance and influence ventional platforms makes our Air Force less predictable. That makes
on its neighbors. defense harder for our potential adversaries.
Building the capabilities to face down To deter war, we must demonstrate Brown also outlined plans to change the
China or Russia and others who might both superior capability and sufficient organizational construct of Air Force units
threaten the U.S. or its allies is our new capacity to endure a fight. down to the wing level, making them more
and familiar challenge. “We have done consistent with the way the other forces are
this before,” Brown said. “And we will do it again.” organized, thus making it easier for Airmen to “plug in” to joint commands.
The Air Force’s equipment is still as good or better than any on Our nation must also do its part. Congress must get out of its own
Earth—but there is not enough of it to meet defense strategy demands. way. We are once again ending a fiscal year without a budget, a wasteful
Airmen’s tactical skills are good, but could be better—practice makes habit that costs taxpayers billions and undermines our investments in
perfect, but most Airmen aren’t getting the flight time they need to national defense.
maximize proficiency. America’s edge—unparalleled for a generation—is In the coming years, America must also restore balance to our nation’s
no longer what it was. Without that strategic overmatch, which made it defense and ensure we are investing at least as much in our Air and
possible to face off larger enemies with smaller, more capable forces, our Space Forces as we are in our Army and Navy. That has not been the
less-is-more formula no longer works. Instead, less is really less. America case for 30 years in a row. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Air Force spending
cannot fight a war of attrition with the likes of China, a nation five times is siphoned off as a “pass-through” to fund other DOD agencies.
more populous than ours. Investing in our Air and Space Forces will ensure Airmen and Guard-
Yet America has advantages. First and foremost, we have friends. ians not only have the advanced capability to defeat rivals, but also the
Our forces, as Brown says, are “integrated by design.” The United States capacity to present an overwhelming threat. It’s not enough to have
does not intend to fight alone, but as an integrated team with allies and the greatest airplanes in the world, one has to have enough of them to
partners. Russia’s attack on Ukraine sought to splinter the NATO alliance, fight. To deter war, we must demonstrate both superior capability and
but instead reinvigorated it, drawing in new members and renewing every sufficient capacity to endure a fight.
member’s commitment to the collective. There is no such organization Finally, we must invest in readiness. Capability is the combination
in the Indo-Pacific, but our allies and partners are many. We share a of technology and skill. Having the world’s greatest combat jets is only
common commitment to democracy, free speech, human rights, the helpful if our pilots are sufficiently skilled to employ them effectively. That
rule of law, and weapons like the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet, which we takes practice. Pilots today are getting less than half the flying hours they
operate in common. need. Training must be regular and consistent to be effective.
Such integration leverages our great national capacity for collabora- The credible capacity to fight is the No. 1 deterrent to war. What rival
tion, innovation, and invention. begins an action without first considering the odds? Our job as citizens
Within the Air Force itself, Brown seeks a cultural shift, away from cen- is to ensure those odds are always in our nation’s favor.
tralization toward distributed decision making that empowers individual America has been here and done that before. And, yes, we can do
Airmen to make decisions on their own. Leaders must convey clear and it again—so long as the Air Force is resourced to do so. J
2 OCTOBER 2022 AIRANDSPACEFORCES.COM
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LETTERS
Air & Space Forces Association
Chiefs 1501 Langston Blvd • Arlington, VA 22209-1198
It was very refreshing to read the words The electric copy of this article is eye-
from Gen. Merril A. McPeak and Gen. Ron- opening! afa.org
ald R. Fogleman in the August 2022 “Four No doubt who the author likes; but the Telephone: 703.247.5800
Chiefs” article [p. 52]. amount of money wasted on a series of Toll-free: 800.727.3337
useless “new” uniforms and other fash- Fax: 703.247.5853
McPeak stated, “What is the Air Force all
about?... It’s about excellence.” That vision ions would have funded a lot of warrior
equipment. AFA’s Mission
is too often lost, he said, in other pursuits. Our mission is to promote dominant U.S.
Again McPeak, “I hear way too much to- In addition his reorganizations made no
Air and Space Forces as the foundation of
day about diversity. sense, except to shake up and waste funds a strong National Defense; to honor and
“It is not the mission of the Air Force to on new stationary, flags, signs, patches support our Airmen, Guardians, and their
solve society’s diversity problems. I’m not while adding nothing to function. One Families; and to remember and respect our
against diversity, but I am for winning in wonders if Dugan might not of served the enduring Heritage.
aerial combat. That comes first.” I couldn’t country’s needs better.
agree more! If all Chiefs could fly as well as [John P.] To accomplish this, we:
Then Fogleman, “… So I began to try and Jumper or focus on the troops like Fogle- • Educate the public on the critical need for
send the message of what it was we did man; the Air Force would be in a superior unrivaled aerospace power and a techni-
deter, and if deterrence fails, we fight and condition. cally superior workforce to ensure national
win America’s wars. That’s why we’re here. The admission that the AFE/EAF was not security.
We’re not a social organization. We’re not a stable idea is the first truth about that
fantasy I have seen published. The con- • Advocate for aerospace power, and pro-
an employment agency. We’re here to fight
cepts were based upon purely imaginary mote aerospace and STEM education and
and win America’s wars.” professional development.
I was grateful to serve under those mind- numbers and never looked at personnel as
sets and that way of life. As I read about all anything but a series of AFSCs. • Support readiness for the Total Air and
the nonsense the Air Force is pursuing and The treatment of the USAF in the 90’s Space Forces, including Active Duty,
prioritizing today, it’s obvious the Air Force was a disgrace, particularly when the Army National Guard, Reserve, civilians, families
has lost its sense of purpose. A perfect ex- couldn’t even get assets to [President and members of the Civil Air Patrol.
ample, [recently] Secretary of the Air Force Bill] Clinton’s military diversion, from his
Frank Kendall announced, “The Depart- scandal, to fight. Contacts
ment of the Air Force offered up new “as- Since then the requirements for Chief CyberPatriot . . . . . [email protected]
pirational” goals for diversity in its officer seem to have morphed into lemmings Field Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [email protected]
applicant pool in August.” So, now we’re as we have had a series of political ap- Government Relations. . . . . . . . . [email protected]
reinstating racism and gender discrimina- pointees. Insurance. . . . . . . . [email protected]
tion by making decisions based on the col- Interesting question, why skip Chief Membership. . . . . . . . [email protected]
Ryan? News Media. . . . [email protected]
or of skin and sex of the officer candidate.
Lastly, the quality of Air Force Secretary StellarXplorers . . . . . . . [email protected]
What happened to merit and ability?
Secretary Kendall, Gen. [Charles Q.] starting sinking around this time and con-
Magazine
Brown and CMSAF [JoAnne S.] Bass tinues to raises serious questions about the Advertising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [email protected]
would do well to read and heed the words support for the warriors vs the ever-chang- Editorial Offices. . . . . . . . . . . [email protected]
of Gens. McPeak and Fogleman. Until they ing social engineering experience. Letters to Editor Column. . . [email protected]
do, the Air Force will continue down the Charlie McCormack,
path of focusing on diversity and inclusion, Danville, Conn. Change of Address/Email
to the detriment of winning America’s wars. In an effort to stay connected with AFA and
CMSgt. Jerald Akers, Editor’s note: Chief Michael Ryan’s per- your local chapter, please update your mail-
USAF (Ret.) spective appears in this issue. ing and email addresses. Change of address
Forest, Va. requires four weeks’ notice.
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Thanks for a revealing USAF 75th Anniver- Khobar Towers, Kelly Flinn, etc). His, and should distinguish it enough from the other
sary edition. I admit to skeptical reading of the Air Force’s values were being trampled F-111 variants to give it its on small place in
General McPeak’s interview, but appreciate on by Secretary of the Air Force and Secre- your commemoration.
that he admitted to some mistakes. As a tary of Defense and he decided to retire ear- Having served in the Strategic Air Com-
member of the USAF helicopter community ly. God bless men like Fogleman. mand for many years, I was quick to see
during his tenure, I recall changing com- General Jumper was my boss twice, once this omission. I’m sure there will be many
mand patches a couple of times, and some as my wing commander at Nellis, and again others who will let you know they missed
of my fellow rotary team as many as four as my dual-hatted boss in NATO AIRCENT seeing the FB-111.
times in a couple-year period. To say that and USAFE/CC. I have deep respect for the Col. Daniel D. Badger Jr.,
it led to chaos and confusion is an under- man, him having inherited the world after USAF (Ret.)
statement as each new owning command 9/11. He is so correct in “how do we re-instill Universal City, Texas
seemed to learn from scratch how to deal confidence,”—by starting internally. Our No.
with us castoffs. General Fogleman’s stabil- 1 job in the Air Force is deterrence and that
ity (or attempt at it) truly helped thousands begins with the basic ability to put warheads The August 2022 Edition is great and I have
of Airmen in this community (both crew and on foreheads. a suggestion that I hope AFA will consider:
maintenance)! If we cannot show that we can do that reli- Your collection of aircraft photos and historic
Speaking of helicopters, I’m sure I’m ably, we have no deterrence. Many of us felt captions is the best I have ever seen.
not the only reader that spotted a swap of like Gen. [T. Michael] Moseley (and Secre- (And I’m a retired USAF Public Affairs Of-
captions on pg. 81, identifying the HH-53: tary of the Air Force Michael Wynne) were ficer and retired corporate PR/Advertising
Super Jolly Green (“Giant” was omitted from unfairly cast aside by someone who let his guy.) Please consider producing a pamphlet
the title) as a CH/HH-3 Jolly Green Giant, emotions, rather than common sense, do that includes all these great reports and
and vice versa. An easy mistake for those his biding. I was a contractor in the F-22 make it available to all of us and the public.
not familiar with the two similar, but very SPO when Secretary of Defense [Robert] Lt. Col. C.J. Hoppin,
different, Sikorsky aircraft. Gates canceled the program at just 187 air- USAFR (Ret.)
Thanks for an interesting read and updat- frames, when we needed at least 350. We Peaks Island, Maine
ed information on current topics. felt he made a rash decision at the expense
Maj. Alan D. Resnicke, of our deterrence ability. His “Next-war-itis” I know when you list significant aircraft
USAF (Ret.) is exactly counter to what we were taught at we’ve had in the Air Force since 1947, you
Silver City, N.M. the war colleges. risk missing a few, but you really blew it
One does not plan the next war based on when you failed to include the great T-29 se-
The August 2022 edition and especially the current one, and there was no compar- ries aircraft. Built by Convair, the T-29 was a
Part I of “Four Chiefs,” provided very intense ison between the SWA wars and preparing mainstay in the Air Force from the early ‘50s
reading. I arrived for duty in the Pentagon for battle with what I often referred to, the and for nearly 40 years. The T-29 was every-
when General McPeak was CSAF and wit- re-emerging Soviet Union, or China. When where and had a fully operational mission.
nessed General Fogleman’s arrival. What I retired a second time, from the F-22 SPO, I T-29s had many configurations and mis-
a breath of fresh air the latter was! I was actually bought Gates’ book to see if I might sions. It was used to train thousands to be
at Nellis, AFB, Nev., before the Pentagon, have missed something. I missed nothing. navigators (the “Flying Classroom”), and
when McPeak came out to fly one of my His decision to cancel the F-22 was a huge was a solid, reliable aircraft to fly to maintain
F-15s. And so we were prepared to get a D mistake. “pilot proficiency” while serving in nonflying
model ready when word from the Pentagon Col. Frank Alfter, jobs. The “Convair” flew as a medical air
asserted he would only fly a C model. That USAF (Ret.) evacuation “air ambulance” (the C-131 ver-
was just the beginning of his demonstrated Beavercreek, Ohio sion, “Samaritan”), and was a reliable per-
arrogance. sonnel transport as a standard “base flight”
And when he did strap on our beautiful 75th Anniversary aircraft.
F-15C, he never spoke with the crew chief Thank you for continuing to pursue excel- I logged thousands of hours as an instruc-
and berated the rest of us (I was a squadron lence in reporting and publication. I always tor pilot and flew her to bases throughout
commander) as not being “real workers.” look forward to receiving my Air Force Mag- the U.S. and to Alaska and Panama. She was
After he landed, not one kind word to the azine and enjoyed the August 2022 issue a grand aircraft that deserves its place in the
crew chief, nor thanks for a great airplane. [“75 Years of Innovation in Flight,” p. 62]. pantheon of operational aircraft you list.
He simply signed the forms and left the I’m sure you anticipated many comments Lt. Col. John Taylor,
flight line. about your section on the operations aircraft USAF (Ret.)
I watched him belittle the weather staffers the Air Force has fielded over the last 75 Puyallup, Wash.
at one of his commander’s calls in the Pen- years. I certainly appreciate the limitations
tagon, telling them not to expect promo- and you did caveat that these pages reflect- I was disappointed to notice your omission
tions, since he saw little need for colonels in ed ‘most’ of the nearly 200 aircraft; and that of the Titan III Space Booster on page 84.
the weather business. He was horrible with you have ‘not attempted to portray every I was part of the development team from
his people. variant.’ Yet, I believe you missed the mark 1964-1969, and we launched several import-
Then along came a real leader and gentle- when deciding not to show the FB-111. ant satellites including Vela, DSP, GPS and
man, General Fogleman. He got rid of that There are many dedicated crew, ground several communications satellites until 1982.
ridiculous McPeak uniform and stood up for operations, and base support personnel and We also launched NASA’s Helios, Viking
his people. He is the only CSAF to actually systems that will be surprised not to have and Voyager space probes. From Vanden-
demonstrate integrity. Politics and optics the FB-111 listed in the bombers pages. The berg Air Force Base, Calif., we launched
got in the way of the Air Force, and he stood fact this system was a medium-range, high- the Keyhole intelligence satellites on Titan
tall and tried to do the right thing (think, and low- flying supersonic nuclear bomber IIIB,D and 34D until 1989.
What About These Favorites?
Editor’s Note: Readers both praised and challenged our 20-page “75 Years of Innovation in Flight” feature (August 2022).
Here below are some of the planes and systems that didn’t make our compilation—but that readers argue deserved to be included.
Master Sgt. Buster Kellum via

National Archives
USAF via AFA Library
USAF
The 76 FB-111s had longer wings and
bigger fuel tanks, versus the convention- The T-29B Samaritan was a converted A transitional, test ICBM, the Titan IIIA was
al “Aardvarks,” to perform the strategic Convair CV-240 used for navigator used four times; three times successfully, to
attack mission with the SRAM missile. training until the early 1970s. launch experimental satellites and test upper
They were retired in the early 1990s. rocket stages.
National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

Master Sgt. Fernando Serna
Tech Sgt. John McDowell

via National Archives
The T-43A—informally the “Gator”—was a A psychological operations aircraft, the EC-
Boeing 737-200 used for navigator training 130E Volant Solo broadcast to citizens of
from the early 1970s through the late 2000s. The SM-75A/PG-17A Thor was USAF’s Grenada and Panama in Operations Urgent
first nuclear ballistic missile, an interme- Fury and Just Cause, respectively, and were
diate-range system deployed in the U.K. later renamed Commando Solo.
between 1959 and 1963.
How could you overlook a program which As usual, your coverage in the August an- We Missileers are still around, still being
contributed so much to our military and niversary issue covered aircraft pretty well, trained at Vandenberg, not only on ICBMs,
civilian space efforts during the Cold War? but you shortchanged us Missileers once but other Air Force missiles. And Sentinel is
Lt. Col. James M. Thompson, again. A few years ago, the Association of on the way.
USAF (Ret.) Air Force Missileers concluded, based on a
Carmel, Ind. lot research done by member Greg Ogletree Col. Charlie Simpson,
and me (I was executive director at the time) USAF (Ret.)
The August 2022 issue offers a wonderful that almost 80,000 Air Force members have Breckenridge, Colo.
retrospective, “Seventy-Five Years of Inno- served or still serve as Air Force Missileers.
vation in Flight.” Unfortunately, it appears We are a small part of the Air Force, but In the section on ISR/C3, my old unit born
to have been allocated a bit too little space. have made giant contributions to nuclear in Vietnam is not pictured. I’m referring
The two-page spread on trainers details all deterrence, for almost 70 of our 75 year Air to 7ACCS, ABCCC, EC-130E. It provided
the planes that contributed to undergrad- Force history. We were and are part of other command, control and communications,
uate pilot training. It even shows the T-1 missions, too, like air defense and air-to-air as well as intelligence threat warnings. I
Jayhawk used for training tanker/transport and air-to-ground combat. believe it first flew out of DaNang, then to
pilots, “as well as navigators.” You briefly mentioned Atlas, but only the A Saigon and finally during the war to Thai-
Without getting into the debates as to and D. How about two key operational Atlas land, all due to airfield safety concerns.
whether combat systems officers are navi- ICBMs, the E and F (12 squadrons), Titan I (6 When I was a crew member in the 1980’s
gators, thousands of navs, RNs, WSOs, and squadrons), Matador and Mace (deployed the squadron was commanded by a spe-
EWOs started their careers in T-29s and in Europe and the Pacific), Jupiter and Thor cial ops full colonel and based at Keesler
T-43s. A few of us even got to come back to (IRBMs in Europe) and GLCM (one reason Air Force Base, Miss.
fly these airplanes as pilots a few years later. the Soviet union is gone). For a long time, One of the planes, tail number 1809 as
Having spent nearly four of the last 75 years we had BOMARC defending our northern shown in another aviation magazine, was
logging T-43 time, it seems some passing border, and there were a whole lot of air-to- used as a fuel bladder plane during the
reference to these airplanes is appropriate. air and air-to-ground systems, nuclear and failed Iran hostage rescue. This plane was
Lt. Col. John Valliere, conventional, that Missileers have worked selected due to being one of the few C-130s
USAF (Ret.) with. (Hound Dog, ALCM, SRAM, Side- capable of being airborne refueled. The
Lake Frederick, Va. winder, Falcon, Maverick and many more). other publication shortly after the opera-
tion published a photo of the burned plane
in the Iranian desert. The origin of the plane (ACIC) in downtown St. Louis. ACIC was those who already know better. Also,
was not published, however we knew be- a function under the HQ USAF DCS for while the movie “Top Gun: Maverick” was
cause of the tail number and the very dis- Intelligence. Its mission was to produce hugely entertaining, the basic plot was
tinctive and numerous antennas. [I was aeronautical charts and flight informa- a group of pilots having to train to use
an] AIO Instructor (Airborne Intelligence tion products mainly for DOD military extraordinary skills because the aircraft
Officer), one of only 12 in the Air Force at operations. At the onset of space-based they were forced to fly against the target
the time. ISR, the first responsibility of ACIC was were horribly obsolete for the task.
Capt. Robert Kinzel, to develop a digital database from which Entertainment is one thing, but the mov-
USAF (Ret.) all ISR, air and missile missions could be ie hit too close to home. It’s not merely the
Jacksonville, Fla. planned on a single worldwide geograph- Air Force who’s flying assets are danger-
ic/geodetic system (WGS). The final ously thin, old, and increasingly obsolete.
Words of Wisdom product was a reference system based The Navy had abandoned stealth until
I am a 10 year veteran of the Air Force on the exact shape of the Earth (a geoid) the F-35C’s finally came online just a few
(F-111’s, Avionics, 82-92). I wanted to versus the previous methods of using years ago. Overall, the nation’s citizens
thank you for the great editorial in the mathematical systems based on various think we have the finest class military in
August 2022 edition. Incredible piece of geographical shapes like the spheroid. the world by an overwhelming margin.
writing. I especially want to point out the The second function of ACIC was to Civilians where I worked asked me, if that
reference to a little bit of Biblical fact/ produce flight information products that Maverick movie was realistic, then how is
history “... to quote St. Paul to Timothy ... I were necessary to facilitate mission it that we pay more for our defense than
have fought the good fight, I have finished planning and ensure flying safety. By anyone else, but would be forced to send
the race, I have kept the faith!” Awesome having a standardized digital world geo- pilots to fight using outdated aircraft? It
seeing in print, this great showing of graphic reference system, the possibil- was a tough question, but the answers
faith of one the most influential contrib- ity of flight error by aircraft and missiles were even tougher.
utors to The Greatest Book Ever Written, was reduced considerably, from errors Every budget battle over the last 30
hands down. Do not be afraid to add in of many miles to errors of less than a years has seen every Air Force aircraft
more from our greatest book in future tenth of a foot. ISR collection, reporting, program attacked roundly, few receiving
issues! Just may impact someone (or and targeting also increased in accuracy. any widespread support, and ultimately
many someone’s) in a very good way! Needless to say, ACIC was a leading the numbers purchased being well short
Also wanted to comment on the let- advocate and instrumental in the devel- of the initially submitted planned require-
ter from MSgt. Mark Bernhardt [See opment of the Global Positioning System ments. We’ve played that game three
Letters, August, p. 5]. I concur!!! Specif- (GPS), which was originally used only for decades and that’s long past the peace
ically the comment “what is the point U.S. military air and missile operations. dividend period. The only remaining
of focusing on notional, ‘feel good’ stuff President [Ronald] Reagan directed the ci- question is when will the federal gov-
like diversity, inclusion, and equality and vilian use of the GPS which has a reduced ernment remember what its first duty is,
hyper-vigilance to root out military ex- accuracy level for limited operations. to provide for the common defense, and
tremists, when the No. 1 priority should ACIC became the Defense Mapping get busy fixing the budget issues? One
be preparation for a war that prom- Agency Aerospace Center (DMAAC) doesn’t see much activism for solution.
ises to be radically different from the when it was consolidated with Navy and Maj. Gen. Ken Stallings,
“sandboxes” of Iraq and Afghanistan.” Army mapping, charting, and geodet- USAF (Ret.)
I am not saying these items are not im- ic (MC&G) agencies into the Defense Douglasville, Ga.
portant, they are. Had an old boss who Mapping Agency (DMA) in 1972. In 1996,
used to preach “do not let perfect get in service and DOD imagery agencies were Old Friend
the way of good!” Great for an engineer- absorbed into DMA and the name was I was a kid growing up at Loring AFB,
ing organization whose main focus was changed to National Imagery and Map- Maine, ‘68-’83. A B52 flying/landing was
“margins.” However, the USAF (The total ping Agency (NIMA). In 2003, the name so ordinary then. I was in tears as I
U.S. military for that matter) should strive was changed to National Geospatial watched the videos coming from the
for “perfect,” because in this business (es- Agency (NGA) and all of its products and Loring Museum this summer. The fact that
pecially today) ... “coming in second place, services became known as geospatial this highly dedicated, enthusiastic group
is a showstopper!” intelligence (GEOINT) and its specialists pulled this event together was a miracle.
Chris Cintron became known as geospatial intelligence [See “Airframes,” September, pp. 16-17].
Parkville, Mo. personnel. It’s an isolated area at the top of Maine.
Lt. Col. Russel A. Noguchi, The area and people from far away still
Space-Based ISR USAF (Ret.) came out in the thousands to see their
In regards to “The Evolution of Space- Pearl City, Hawaii beloved planes fly over head after leaving
Based ISR,” by Maj. Gen. Thomas Tav- in 1994. Thank you for the beautiful pic-
erney, USAF (Ret.) [August, p. 94.], the Based on Actual Events ture and recognition. To those who were
author did an excellent job in writing the Reading the article titled “Rebuilding there, this scene will be in their hearts
article. I wish to add a few comments America’s Air Power” [September 2022] forever. [My] dad retired as a senior
based on my experience as a cartograph- brought to mind a few hard truths. In the master sergeant. He was a licensed AP
ic officer, which is currently called geo- golf game, when you cheat, you’re only mechanic and would go on to work on
spatial intelligence officer, on Active duty cheating yourself, and the same is true WWII Warbirds at the Valiant Air Com-
from September 1967 to October 1987. for military funding. The pass-through mand in Titusville, Fla.
My first assignment was at the Aero- scheme is a means of cheating, and Colleen Iacuzzo
nautical Chart and Information Center remains pointless as we’re only cheating Jacksonville Beach, Fla.
VERBATIM
At the CHANGING TIMES Get Ready

Speed of “Western nations want to preserve the Old World Order, which
Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces

benefits only them, to make everyone follow the ‘rules’ they
Yesterday invented themselves and which they regularly break or change

to their benefit. … The policies adopted by the leaders of the
U.S. and its allies run counter to the public’s interests, which
they are supposed to protect–this shows the Western elites are
‘detached from their own people.’”
Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space
Magazine
—Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Eastern Economic Forum in
Vladivostok, Russia [RT.com, Sept. 7].
Forces Magazine
“We have combat

air patrols in the air,
with live weapons,
as a deterrent to
“My aviators need Russia. But we don’t
JATM in high quantity want to just do that.
numbers yesterday. Because if you just
And so I’ll advocate do that, you’re just
for the testing to go
& Space Forces Magazine

doing circles in the
forward … as fast as sky, and you get very
the testing enterprise inproficient. ... As we
and risk will allow, and move forward, the
I need to get it bolt- new normal is going
ed on their airplanes to be a lot of practic-
yesterday. … (I) shot ing with other nations
AMRAAMs 25 years ... on missions that
Mike Tsukamoto/Air
ago. I need to get them we’re going to have
Courtesy
something different.” to do should Russia
decide to attack a
—Gen. Mark D. Kelly, head
of Air Combat Command,
neighbor.”
speaking with reporters Sept.
Don’t Get Me Started

21 about the classified AIM- —Gen. James B. Hecker,
260 Joint Advanced Tactical commander of U.S. Air
Missile, which expands on the Forces in Europe-Air Forces
range and capability of the Africa, speaking to reporters
AIM-120 AMRAAM. “Social media has a huge impact on information warfare, and at ASC22, Sept. 19.
the need for digital and social media literacy has never been
greater. And that is whether it’s in grade school, and most cer-
tainly throughout the military. A generation of American sons
Jud McCrehin/Air & Space
and daughters who would enter our Air Force spend nearly,
on average, four hours a day on Facebook, Instagram, Twit-
Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces

ter, Snapchat, YouTube, and don’t get me started on TikTok.
Forces Magazine
The adversaries know this and they are taking full advantage.
Information Warfare threatens to disrupt our way of life, and
to some degree, our will to fight as a unified nation, and every
one of us has a responsibility to ensure that we are ready, alert,
and aware of the tactics of the adversaries. They don’t care if
Money Matters you’re at home or at work, the information domain is ever pres-
Magazine
ent. The Airmen today and into the future have got to be critical
“The DAF leadership thinkers who are collectively focused so that our Air Force can
knows we can’t expect be what it needs to be when our nation calls on us.”
Airmen and Guardians
to give their all to the —Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass, at AFA’s
THE FUTURE
mission when they are
worried about paying
2022 Air, Space & Cyber Conference (ASC22), Sept. 21.
IS NOW
MADNESS
for gas to get to work, “Nobody is going to
finding child care, and care what our plans
providing their family a are for five to 10 years
safe place to live. “There will never be any declaration of giving up our nukes or if we lose tomorrow.”
That starts with com- denuclearization, nor any kind of negotiations or bargaining to
pensation.” meet the other side’s conditions.” —Gen. Mike Minihan,
commander of Air Mobility
—Air Force Secretary Frank —North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speech on nuclear weapons as the Parliament Command, speaking at
Kendall, ASC22, Sept. 19. passed a new law allowing preemptive nuclear strikes [Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9]. ASC22.
8 OCTOBER 2022 AIRFORCEMAG.COM

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AIRFRAMES
Airman 1st Class Isabelle Churchill

, ,,
Members of the Air Force’s Air Demonstration Squadron, the
Thunderbirds, perform a Calypso Pass during the Joint Base
Andrews 2022 Air & Space Expo in Maryland, in September.
10 OCTOBER 2022 AIRANDSPACEFORCES.COM OCTOBER 2022 AIRANDSPACEFORCES.COM 11

AIRFRAMES
Master Sgt. Mysti BicoyANG

, ,, Air Force crew chiefs from the Hawaiian Raptor Expeditionary
U.S.
Squadron, a Total Force Integrated unit based out of Joint Base
Pearl Harbor-Hickam, conduct a basic postflight inspection
at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal, Northern Territory,
Australia. Opportunities to train alongside our allies and partners
enhance interoperability and bolster our collective ability to
support a free and open Indo-Pacific.

AIRFRAMES
Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman/USSF

, ,,
Members of the 216th Space Control Squadron (SPCS) set up antennas as part of a Honey
Badger System during Black Skies 22 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., in September. The
first exercise of its kind, Black Skies 22 used live and virtual simulations to layer electromagnetic
effects against 29 simulated targets. Participants also planned and executed integrated
operations and rehearsed command and control relationships.

GTP_10461_LibertyWorks New Ad Jan2022_v06.indd All Pages 9/23/22 9:44 AM
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
AFSOC Shifts Focus

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife was set to transition from his role com-
manding Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt
Field, Fla., at the beginning of October, with a likely assignment
to the Pentagon next. He visited the Air & Space Forces Associa-
tion in September for an Air & Space Warfighters in Action event.
This conversation with AFA President Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright has
been edited for space.
Q: How is AFSOC preparing to make the shift from

counterinsurgency to peer competition with the likes of
Russia and China?
A: The question is, how do you go about this change, partic-
ularly in an era [where] we expect fairly flat or perhaps declin-
Mike Tsukamoto/staff
ing budgets for the special operations forces? … The answer
is, you take stock of what you have, and you think about how
you can use it a little differently.
The analogy that I use is … [sometimes for dinner] we go
to the grocery store, we get a buggy and we fill up the buggy
with rib-eye steak and a baked potato and key lime pie and a Lt. Gen. James Slife, commander, Air Force Special Operations
bottle of wine. But more often than not, we go and open the Command, discusses AFSOC operations at the Air & Space
refrigerator and we open the cabinet next to the refrigerator Forces Association in Arlington, Va., in September.
and we look at the ingredients that we have and we figure out
how to make different recipes with the ingredients we’ve got. Q: How is AFSOC combining Agile Combat Employment
We’ve got some great ingredients in the Air Force Special with your already proven joint warfighting experience?
Operations Command. Obviously, the most powerful ingredi- A: Since the end of the Cold War, the Air Force has been on
ent we have is the Airmen that make up the command. We’ve a bit of a centralization drive. We typically centralize things
really got a fantastic force. Clearly our Airmen are our com- because we tell ourselves it will be more efficient or there are
petitive advantage, so how do we empower those Airmen? economies of scale or we don’t have enough to go around. …
The second great ingredient we’ve got is some really fantas- And when you centralize, you tend to create functional orga-
tic platforms. Not without our challenges in some of them of nizations. We gather together all of our comptrollers, and we
course, but AFSOC has the youngest fleet of aircraft inside the put them together into a single squadron, and we call it the
entire Air Force. …They’re multi-role platforms. We can use comptroller squadron. …
them a little differently. While that has worked reasonably well in a static environ-
ment where we’re largely not pressured by an adversary, …
Q: AFSOC recently demonstrated you can launch a Joint the challenge is that’s not actually how a mission manifests
Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) from an MC-130. itself. I spent several years at CENTCOM, and in the time that
What is this capability for? I spent at CENTCOM, we never once submitted a request for
A: One of the things that we tend to do [in the Air Force] is forces asking for the on-call comptroller squadron because
we get affixed to our prefixes. … What do we do with airplanes we had a financial management emergency that we needed
that start with B? We drop bombs. to solve in CENTCOM.
… We label our airplanes, and we allow that to constrain And so the question is, how do you build teams organized
our thinking to what we can do with that airplane. But, in fact, around a mission and not around a function? That’s kind of
they’re all just airplanes, right? … at the heart of how we’re approaching what the Air Force
If you can take a C-130 and enable that to be a delivery plat- broadly calls agile combat employment. We’re building what
form for a dozen long-range standoff precision munitions, inside of AFSOC we call mission sustainment teams. This is 58
this is the same payload that a B-52 [can carry]. Out of a 3,000- Airmen—19 different specialties—that come together into an
foot dirt strip, you can have a long-range fires platform that organization, and they spend an entire force generation cycle
carries the same payload as a B-52. … together. …
And so this capability allows us to use what we already And those 58 Airmen all learn one another’s skills. They all
have in non-traditional ways to create volume-of-fire chal- learn to interoperate. And critically, they learn to trust their
lenges for our adversaries. It also creates targeting problems teammates because they’ve been training with them for the
too. I mean, it’s not hard to figure out where all the 10,000 feet whole cycle. … And the sense of purpose that those Airmen
concrete runways in the Pacific are. But when you’re trying to possess is really remarkable. Every time our Command Chief
figure out where the 3,000-foot straight stretches of road and and I go visit these Airmen, the first question they ask is, ‘Do I
grass strips are … that’s a different targeting problem for your have to go back to my squadron?’ They really, really like what
adversaries. … they’re doing because they’re directly connected to a mission,
and they’re challenging themselves. … globe. …
Q: You mentioned the Air Force’s new force generation We’ve had a number of requests from partners to actually
model. What are you seeing there? demonstrate this capability and to help them integrate that
A: From a commander’s perspective, the value of a disci- onto their aircraft.
plined force generation model is it allows you to articulate
capacity and risk to the joint force in a way that has eluded Q: In competition with China, how important are ad-
us up to this point. vanced AI sensors for the future of AFSOC?
For example, when I was an ops group commander, we A: If you think back … as an Air Force, when we got into the
were kind of in the … ‘more ISR, more ISR, more ISR’ busi- remotely piloted aircraft business in the 1990s, we did it the
ness. … And the question was always, ‘Hey, can you fly one way that you might expect the Air Force to do it. … One pilot,
more combat line for us?’ one cockpit, one data link to one airplane—that model has
How do you answer that question? I actually have a crew persisted now for the better part of 30 years.
here that’s available. And I actually have an airplane that’s … That’s a very manpower-intensive methodology for op-
available, and I have a ground control station. And so, I erating aircraft. And so one of the things we’re looking at is
mean, the answer is, ‘Yes, I can.’ But what I’m unable to com- moving to an open architecture control layer that has the
municate is the pressure on the force. … ability to control multiple platforms, multiple types. It’s really
We’ve been unable to talk about our capacity in a way that platform agnostic. …
resonates with the joint force. It becomes too technical and All of that is here and now stuff. It’s a matter of bringing it
complicated. And so when we migrated to a four-cycle force together into a logical architecture. And we’re actually mov-
generation model, it allows us to have these conversations ing pretty quickly down that path inside of AFSOC.
very unemotionally and very fact-based and allows us to ar-
ticulate risk and capacity in a way that has really eluded us Q: What is the testing plan for developing an amphibi-
[before]. ous capability for AC- or MC-130s ?
A: We don’t have any plans to land a gunship on the water.
Q: How does the demand signal from combatant com- The weight and the center of gravity is a little bit different on
manders contrast with the resources you really need? that. [This is] really for our MC-130s. But we’re already going
A: We frequently talk about mission and resources: ‘We through the tank testing right now.
have more missions than we have Airmen’ [to do them], or We’ve got a 100 percent digital design. We started out with
‘we’re being asked to do more with less.’ It always comes a number of digital designs. We ran through a series of test-
down to mission and resources. But the point that we make ing to figure out, do we want to do a catamaran, a pontoon, a
inside of AFSOC is there’s actually a third variable, and that hull applique on the bottom of the aircraft? I mean, we kind
third variable is risk. And so there’s always a tension between of went through all the iterations of that. And we settled on
mission, risk, and resources. a design that provides the best trade-off of drag, weight, sea
If you tell me, ‘Hey, Jim, I need you to do more mission with state performance—all those types of things.
no more resources,’ I can do that. It just comes with increased And so we’ve got a 100 percent design done. Everything
risk. Or if you tell me, ‘You’re taking too much risk. I need you has so far tested out pretty much the way the digital design
to reduce the level of risk you’re taking,’ I can do that. It either was predicted to perform. And so I think we’re going have
means I do less mission or I need more resources. So there’s a our first construction of this, an amphibious modification—
three-way relationship here, and what we have to be better at it’s not a float plane. It will have the ability to land on both
is articulating risk in ways that are understandable to people land or water. And it’ll be a field-installable modification kit.
outside the bubble of the Air and Space Forces. And so it won’t be every airplane; it won’t be all the time. It’ll
be a capability that’s available to the fleet, and I think we’re
Q: You discussed earlier the use of a C-130 to deliver going to start aircraft integration in 2023.
a JASSM. What challenges will that capability create for
adversaries? Q: What synergies exist between SOF, cyber, and
A: The thing about that capability, it’s not actually about space, and what AFSOC is doing in that realm?
the JASSM. It’s about the unconventional use of the platforms A: A common theme for the last five years inside of SO-
that we have available to us. We’re actually looking at other COM has been the magic that occurs at this intersection of
types of munitions and capabilities, whether it’s an electron- SOF, space, and cyber capabilities. … Much of the defining
ic attack capability that we might want to deploy, whether it’s security. … tend to be trans-regional in nature. So these
long-range precision fires. I mean, you could use your imagi- three combatant commands [CYBERCOM, SOCOM, and
nation to figure out the many things that you might do with a SPACECOM] have global responsibilities, and so there is an
large volume carrier like a C-130 or C-17. opportunity to kind of bring those three together to address
The challenges that presents [are], No. 1, from a targeting some of these trans-regional challenges.
perspective, I think an adversary has to take a different look The question then becomes, how do you do it at the tactical
at the region [in regards] to where we project power from? level? Inside of AFSOC, our answer to that [is] we’re building
No. 2, we have a lot of partners around the globe that don’t in each of our wings units that have a heavy intelligence, ana-
have heavy bomber platforms that would be traditional car- lytic, multi-source intelligence capability, and have some of
riers of those types of munitions. But they’ve got plenty of our more high-end SOF capabilities embedded inside those
C-130s proliferated around the globe, and A-400s and C-17s. units, along with teammates from both the Space Force and
And the beauty is, this capability doesn’t require any aircraft CYBERCOM embedded in those units. And so that synergy
modifications, and it doesn’t require any special crew train- can take place, not at an ethereal level but down at a tactical
ing beyond what any airdrop crew already possesses. It’s re- level, solving problems that are much more locally focus-
ally easily exportable to our partners and allies around the ed. J
WORLD
AIR , SPACE & CYBER
CONFERENCE
Air & Space Forces Magazine

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Charles Brown Jr. told the AFA audience at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference that flexibility of
the force, particularly through the Agile Combat Employment construct, will keep adversaries guessing and preserve USAF’s edge.
Air Force Looks to

By James Kitfield
Adapt With ACE
T
Brown spoke against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing war
against Ukraine, with Moscow threatening nuclear attack
he Air Force is confronting one of the most conse- against anyone that dares intervene, and China’s moves, a
quential inflection points in its 75-year history, Chief few weeks earlier, of launching ballistic missiles and military
of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr. told his assembled top maneuvers around Taiwan, after unilaterally declaring that the
commanders at AFA’s 2022 Air, Space & Cyber Con- roughly 100-mile Taiwan Strait was no longer “international
ference. The Agile Combat Employment construct—of waters.” In recent years, China has built and militarized a string
dispersing and frequently re-deploying forces to a myriad of small islands to back its discredited claims over virtually the
of bases to complicate an enemy’s targeting problem—is a entire South China Sea.
centerpiece of how USAF is responding, he and other service During his first two years as Chief, “I’ve watched with pride
leaders said. and seen the vision of ‘accelerate change or lose’ take hold in
Repeating his off-stated imperative to “accelerate change every corner of our Air Force,” said Brown, noting that many of
or lose,” Brown described the existential stakes at play in the those changes are driven by the service’s new warfighting doc-
nation’s confrontations with aggressive, authoritarian regimes trine of “agile combat employment,” or ACE. The traditional way
in Beijing and Moscow. USAF has deployed to established bases over the past several
“If we don’t get this right together—if we fail to adapt—we decades “will not work against the advancing threat,” he said.
risk our national security, our ideals, and the current rules- Airmen are driving the cultural transformation that ACE
based international order,” Brown warned. represents, he said. But “we must continue to develop and
“But if we do get this right, together; if we do adapt, we’ll refine capabilities that are important to ACE: command and
preserve the freedoms we hold most dear,” support alliances, control, logistics under attack, resilient basing, air and missile
democracy, common values “and strengthen societies all defense—just to name a few,” he stated. Embracing ACE will
around the world.” also demand that “we … all be multi-capable Airmen. That’s
… a mindset and technical competency, that when things hit “In the next three to five years we’ll see the extension of
the fan, our Airmen are ready.” runways in small islands in the Pacific, including around the
Guam cluster,” said Wilsbach. Rapid airfield damage assess-
INDO-PACIFIC CHALLENGE ment and repair is also being emphasized, “so that if an airfield
Air Force leaders said ACE has come to dominate internal takes a hit, we can fill those holes and get things running again
counsels and the service’s strategic plans. very quickly.”
“When we talk about ‘global competition,’ we’re talking The ACE concept was declared initially operational in 2021,
about China, China, China,” said Gina Ortiz Jones, undersec- and PACAF is now working to reach full operational capability.
retary of the Air Force. “If you don’t wake up thinking about Its focus on dispersal and “multi-capable Airmen” is becoming
the pacing challenge, you’re doing it wrong.” second nature in the theater.
China has long strategized around a potential attack on Last year, “ACE was new and sort of episodic,” Wilsbach said,
Taiwan, saying in a recent white paper that Beijing will resolve but PACAF is conducting “some kind of ACE event almost every
“the Taiwan question” and reunify China “by force if necessary.” day, now.” He envisions pilots landing on remote islands in the
“We’ve also heard [Chinese President Xi Jinping] tell his Pacific, swiftly refueling, and getting aloft again even before
military commanders to be ready to take Taiwan by force by being assigned their next mission.
2027,” said Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, PACAF commander Recently, he said, “we had an F-35 pilot land at Elmendorf
and the air component commander to U.S. Indo-Pacific Com- in Alaska and get out of the cockpit and refuel his own jet. …
mand. While the U.S. military was distracted by the “global I never had to do that!”
war on terror” and counterterrorism operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan for two decades, China pursued an “anti-access/ AIR MOBILITY ADAPTATION
area denial” (A2/AD) military strategy, chiefly by holding a Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, un-
handful of major U.S. air and naval bases in the Indo-Pacific veiled his “Mobility Manifesto” at the conference, setting the
at risk with its massive arsenal of precision-guided, theater ambitious goal of being ready to operate and fight inside the
ballistic missiles, according to Wilsbach. “first island chain” outside Chinese waters by August 2023.
“Traditionally, we had only a handful of very large bases in AMC will have a critical role in the region, given the “tyranny
a theater, [so] our adversaries developed the capability to lob of distance,” he commented.
missiles into those bases and shut them down, depriving us “AMC is the joint force maneuver. There is too much water
of our air power,” said Wilsbach, adding, “we essentially had and too much distance [in the Pacific] for anyone else to do it
all of our eggs in one basket.” relevantly, at pace, at speed, at scale,” Minihan asserted. While
The countermove is ACE. Shifting Air Force combat opera- “everybody’s role is critical, if we don’t have our act together,
tions from major air bases to dispersed, bare-bones airfields, nobody wins.”
however, requires rethinking every level of operations, from AMC leaders have set a think-outside-the-box team of
command and control and logistics to air base defense and functional experts called “The Fight Club.” Composed of offi-
repair. cers and NCOs, it’s imagining what a winning, agile “scheme
The ACE concept requires “expanding the number of [air- of maneuver” looks like against an adversary such as China.
base] hubs and spokes we use, which creates extremely com- “There are still major gaps in the concept, beginning with
plex command-and-control challenges, especially in the midst command and control, because this is a really huge area of
of [a] dynamic…contested environment” featuring jamming operations,” said Brian P. Kruzelnick, command CMSgt. for
and chemical/biological/radiological threats, said Wilsbach. AMC. “Contested logistics and maneuver are also very hard
problems to solve,” he said, likening it to “running an obstacle
REIMAGINING C2 & LOGISTICS course while someone is shooting at you.”
Brown recently reissued Air Force Doctrine Publication 1 AMC runs an air expeditionary center that cross-trains Air-
to emphasize mission command and the clear articulation men on the multiple skill sets needed to arrive at an austere air
of “commander’s intent” to the lowest levels of command. base, establish security and command-and-control, and get
“Leaders need to give our Airmen intent, empower them, and operations underway. The center marks an advanced course
get the hell out of the way,” he intoned. in training multi-capable Airmen.
Air Combat Command’s Command Chief Master Sergeant “I know [that term] freaks some people out, but if you’ve de-
John G. Storms said the Air Force must be mindful that ACE ployed in the last 30 years and you were asked to do something
“raises the possibility that units will be operating in an environ- outside of your sole specialty, you are already a multi-capable
ment of degraded command and control, with incomplete or Airman,” said Kruzelnick. “We just gave it a new name and put
inaccurate information, and oftentimes without the specialists some structure behind it.”
or subject-matter experts we are accustomed to having at our Other recent ACE experiments include:
big air bases.” ■ AMC is looking at slashing crew size on aircraft like the
Junior leaders will be asked to “make the best decisions pos- KC-46 tanker from three to two, by eliminating the co-pilot.
sible” under less-than-ideal conditions with the information at The command is also looking for a KC-46 crew break to current
hand, “executing according to their commander’s intent.” On records by flying 30-hour plus sorties.
the upside, “if you’re a young leader, it’s a perfect opportunity ■ Air Force Special Operations Command is developing an
to express your leadership abilities,” he said. amphibious modification system to allow its MC-130J aircraft
Because adversaries will surely target logistics and resupply to take off and land on water.
nodes, PACAF has also been funded to sharply increase levels ■ The Hawaii Air National Guard’s 199th Fighter Squadron
of prepositioned equipment, fuel, ammo, and supplies in the has experimented with deploying its F-22 Raptors supported
theater. To facilitate a much wider dispersal of air operations, by just one pallet of parts and equipment, which can be moved
PACAF is negotiating new basing and overflight rights in the by a C-130 transport or even a CH-47 helicopter.
region and expanding airfields and related facilities. ■ Last June, two Air National Guard C-130s flew to Guam,

picked up a Marine Corps High-Mobility Artillery Rocket acquaint them with the considerable operational demands of
System [HIMARS] rocket launcher, and took it to another ACE. Joint exercises will also underscore to potential adversar-
base for a simulated firing exercise before reloading it and ies that allies remain an asymmetrical advantage for the U.S.
returning to Guam. Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, commander of U.S. Transpor-
■ Senior Master Sgt. Brent Kenny of the 52nd Fighter Wing tation Command, sees lessons from the Afghanistan experi-
created a system using solar fabric and an environmental water ence, “because we were faulted for our ability to ‘scale quickly’
harvester to produce drinking water, negating the need for and eventually had to abandon some of our processes,” which
pallets of prepackaged water and saving precious cargo space. slowed down operations.
“We also could not have accomplished that mission without
TRAINING & EXERCISING AGILITY allies granting us overflight rights, which we will need in spades
Such ACE concepts and others will be tested at “Mobility in the Indo-Pacific,” she said.
Guardian 23,” AMC’s premier annual exercise, which will shift Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, director of the Air Guard, pointed
from the continental U.S. to the Pacific next year. The need for to lessons learned from the Afghanistan noncombatant evac-
rigorous training and regular exercises to identify capability uation, the largest in U.S. history. During the operation, one
gaps and flaws in new concepts is another lesson standing out of the Guard’s C-17 crews landed at Kabul airport, taking fire.
from early ACE doctrine development. Whenever possible, While the need to complete the mission and relaunch was
training events and exercises will be joint service and include urgent, the aircrew had no time to ask permission to abandon
international allies to better reflect how the Air Force will fight standard operating procedure.
in a real-world scenario. “The loadmaster took … calculated risks, and in just 55 min-
Training and exercise regimes “that are really tough” must utes, he unloaded cargo that would normally take four hours to
be created, to teach enlisted leaders “to take prudent risks and offload,” said Loh. When asked how he did it, the loadmaster
not be afraid of making mistakes,” said Storms. “Debriefs also told Loh, “‘you don’t want to know,’” but Loh insisted, to ensure
need to be timely and accurate in order to ensure we learn that no one in the chain of command will “stifle that kind of
from the mistakes we do make,” he said. ingenuity.” While the Afghan evacuation was kind of “the ‘Wild
Partners and allies need to be included in exercises, both to West’ … that is the culture we need to harness in the future.” J
An Emphasis on People
By Greg Hadley
“People” issues that generate headlines—

inflation, recruiting challenges and sexual
assault, to name a few—were a main topic
among Department of the Air Force lead-
Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

ers speaking at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber
Conference.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall set the
tone with his opening keynote speech, de-
voting roughly two-thirds of his 30-minute
address to personnel issues like compen-
sation, diversity programs, sexual assault
prevention, child care, and housing.
Such a focus is needed, Kendall argued,
to ensure the Department of the Air Force
(DAF) is ready to compete with near-peers
China and Russia.
USAF will try to soften the inflation blow—restoring special duty pay to some—and
Though he is known as “a technocrat,”
work on allowances and child care availability, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall
Kendall said, he must put people first, be-
promised.
cause “it all comes back to mission and our
readiness to perform it.” Guardians to give their all to the mission when they are wor-
“If you think that calling our Airmen and Guardians our de- ried about paying for gas to get to work, finding child care, and
cisive national advantage is just a tagline, take a look at what's providing their family a safe place to live,” Kendall said. “That
happening in Ukraine,” he said. “We're seeing the price Russia starts with compensation.”
is paying for failing to invest in its people. We're seeing failure Compensation has been affected by record-high inflation,
at scale in action, and it is very visible on the battlefield.” All though. Service members are slated in 2023 for one of their
DAF leaders took time to lay out a raft of policy changes and biggest pay raises in decades, but it could be swallowed up by
shifting focus. rising costs if current inflation rates persist.
Meanwhile, the Air Force has had to make ends meet to
COMPENSATION rising expenses like the cost of fuel.
Kendall identified three main areas where personnel have With costly modernization programs to pay for, DAF made a
expressed concerns: compensation, housing costs or condi- controversial cut in its 2023 budget to reduce special duty pay
tions, and child care. for many communities of Airmen. This pay, which ranges from
“The DAF leadership knows we can’t expect Airmen and $75 to $450 per month, incentivizes Airmen and Guardians to
stick with difficult duties that may involve an
unusual degree of responsibility or a military
skill in short supply.
But Kendall announced he was revers-
ing that cut, saying the system had been
“out of sync with the rapid changes to our
economy.”
Leaders also acknowledged they have to
address rapid economic changes affecting

things like Basic Allowance for Housing
(BAH) and Basic Allowance for Subsistence.
Those allowances are set to get bumps in
fiscal 2023, but again, inflation may erode
them.
The Pentagon’s ability to respond to in-
flationary pressures is somewhat limit-
ed—typically, allowances are adjusted on a
year-by-year basis. In September 2021, the
Defense Department announced a tempo-
rary increase in BAH to help troops in certain
markets, followed by another temporary
Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Raymond gave the State of the Space Force
increase for a smaller group of markets in
keynote address with focus on recruiting and competing for strategic talent.
September 2022.
Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne
S. Bass has called for the Pentagon to craft a faster, more respon- Perhaps the biggest change Bass previewed is a new assign-
sive method for adjusting BAH, and in a panel on community ment swap policy, which could allow Airmen to switch jobs
relations, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. indicated he and locations if they can find someone with a similar specialty
also wanted a change. and skill level.
He’s looking for ways “to be a bit more responsive on some “There’s a whole lot more coming,” she said.
of our allowances to match up with what the economy is do- Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond
ing,” he said. He also doesn’t want Airmen to endure “a roller touted the service’s focus on specialized skillsets for Guardians,
coaster ride” of wide swings, when inflation bears down or allowing assignments to be more tailored.
eases up, driving unpredictable changes in compensation, “It's no longer good enough to say, ‘Hey, I need a lieutenant
“So as a family, you can actually … build a budget.” Airmen colonel space operator, or a master sergeant space operator,”
should have a firm idea of “what your paycheck is going to he explained. Now, it’s “we wanted a lieutenant colonel or
look” every month. master sergeant with orbital warfare…[and] technical skills…for
In addition to allowances, Kendall and others all stressed the example, data management skills.” By doing this for every billet,
importance of providing better child care options for Airmen “we could be more purposeful in our assignment process.”
and Guardians. Towberman went further, saying “the entire environment is
Brown and Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force Roger A. tailorable,” so that while the Space Force has focused on special-
Towberman both noted issues that can leave families scram- ized assignments, it has opened up its leadership opportunities.
bling for childcare options because the DAF’s system is too “On the enlisted side, we don't have … key leadership po-
slow or complicated; a fact Towberman highlighted with a sitions anymore. We don't have stratifications anymore,” he
slide showing that there are fewer steps a service member must said. “We're doing all we can to eliminate anything that could
follow to get childcare than those needed to quit the service. be used as a proxy for truth … [things] we should be able to
“We live in the one-click world, and we must be retention-fo- learn and know about a human being if we look hard enough.”
cused,” he said.
“The technical expertise, the depth of experience, the phe- RECRUITING
nomenal craftsmen that we need to stay ahead of China and While Towberman preached the importance of retention,
to win cannot be built in six months or a year, or in four years.” the services still need to recruit new talent as well. And while
That requires that DAF give no one a reason to quit. “It can't the USSF continues to have more than enough applicants, the
be easier to leave than it is to get help.” Air Force is hitting an historically tough recruiting environment
and only barely reached its Active-duty goals for fiscal 2022.
ASSIGNMENTS Both long-term and short-term issues affect the Air Force
Leaders also laid out new policies aimed at giving Airmen Recruiting Service, commander Maj. Gen. Edward W. Thomas
and Guardians more options and flexibility in their careers. Jr. told reporters. Among them are continued declines in both
Bass announced a slate of changes on how the Air Force eligibility and propensity to serve among America’s youth,
handles assignments, based on recommendations from the along with the cumulative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic
Enlisted Assignment Working Group. Among them were and a competitive labor market.
switches to assignment priority posts for military training Some of those short-term problems will resolve themselves
instructors, military training leaders, and recruiters; no more over time, Thomas said. But for the bigger picture issues, the
time-on-station requirements for expedited transfers, and Air Force’s recruiting enterprise is taking a proactive approach.
no ‘report no-later-than dates’ for four months for Airmen That includes expanding the pool of eligible recruits: Penta-
returning from deployments. gon surveys have shown that just 23 percent of the target popu-
lation is eligible due to issues such as medical conditions, prior “For instance, … if you look at issues like mental health
drug use, out-of-regulation tattoos, and trouble with the law. conditions, anxiety, eczema, asthma … we’ve been able to
He insisted that he has no intention of compromising on turn up the dial” on who will be granted a waiver, decreasing
standards, but Thomas outlined several ways that eligibility the disqualifying rate “by 30 percent or more in some of those
can be expanded. categories, simply by having the data” to better assess potential
“A year or two ago, frankly, we could afford to lose people impacts, Thomas explained.
around the margins because of finger tattoos, [or] because of In addition to expanding the overall recruiting pool, Air Force
certain medical conditions that we weren’t willing to take risk and Space Force leaders also emphasized continued efforts
on,” Thomas said. “We are in an environment today that we to attract a more diverse cohort of Airmen and Guardians, an
have to be exceptionally smart in how we assess the risk and effort Thomas said will not affect standards but is necessary to
how we set our accession criteria.” solve the “mathematical” problem of an increasingly diverse
Recently, Thomas was granted the authority to approve general population.
waivers for smaller hand tattoos, a process he’s done hundreds More immediately, Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones said, a
of times using photos on his iPhone. more “deliberate” approach to recruiting diverse candidates
It’s a process he’d like to shed. He’s advocating for a change will increase mission readiness.
in policy to reflect changing societal attitudes toward tattoos. She said, “We recently had a meeting at the department,
Another issue that has seen a shift in public opinion is mar- where we were talking about our competition for strategic
ijuana use. As more and more states legalize cannabis, either talent. And the last time we had looked at our talent pool and
for recreational or medicinal use, the Air Force is also taking our goals…with regard to some critical languages was in 2004.
steps to ensure it isn’t automatically disqualifying for a recruit, That was a long time ago. ... That was Baghdad times. We’re in
while at the same time emphasizing that “drug use … has no Beijing times.”
place” in the Air Force. The critical talent pool with respect to these language skills
A new policy allows recruiters the latitude to let recruits “did not reflect essentially what we needed,” she said, driving
retake their drug test if they come up positive at the Military a rethink of requirements—as well as being “deliberate about
Entrance Processing Station (MEPS), and it’s determined to be bringing in that talent.”
due to unintentional exposure or residual effects, Thomas said. It takes about six to eight years to develop a Chinese linguist
“This is not about … those folks who were not honest with at the “three-three level,” she noted.
their recruiter, and they smoked marijuana…and the next day “That's a long time. That's time we don't have. You know who
or … week, they went to MEPS and they tested positive. That's can probably get to three-three, if they're not already at a three-
not who this is for,” he noted. three, much quicker? Chinese Americans; first-generation kids”
Recruiters are also looking to leverage more data when who may see that one or two hitches in the Department of the
it comes to approving recruits with medical conditions that Air Force “might be something that is attractive for them and
previously would have been automatically disqualifying. something that they may consider, had they not previously.”J
Flexibility for the Air Force Future

By Chris Gordon
New capabilities like hypersonic

missiles, B-21 bombers, and other
cutting-edge weapon systems are
key to the Department of the Air
Force’s future. But it must also have
the flexibility to make the most of
what it already has, top leaders Mike Tsukamoto Air & Space Forces Magazine
said at AFA's Air, Space & Cyber
Conference on Sept. 19-21.
Among the marquee initiatives
in making old USAF systems capa-
ble of new tricks include turning
cargo planes into weapons launch-
ers, training “multi-capable” Air-
men to double up on their skills,
dispersing aircraft to expeditionary
bases, and working more effective-
ly with allies.
"The Air Force was founded AMC Commander Gen. Mike Minihan laid out his “Mobility Manifesto,” to include smaller
on a different way of looking at aircrews and cargo planes shooting missiles.
things," said Gen. Mike Minihan,
the head of Air Mobility Command and the former deputy and effective manner.”
commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command The initiatives are diverse. Under the Rapid Dragon pro-
(USINDOPACOM). The service must "make sure we're doing gram, the Air Force is experimenting with dropping palletized
everything possible to use what we have in the most efficient munitions out the back of cargo planes such as the C-130
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a new era
of security
Google Cloud has led the way
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Let’s get solving. goo.gle/fed-security

and C-17. Crated onto wooden pallets, AGM-158B Joint Air- Academy graduate.
to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) Another innovation, which the Air Force has already put
missiles fall out of the aircraft, are extracted from the pallet into effect, is ending the practice of continuously basing
by parachute or gravity, ignite their engines, and head off to bombers in Guam and instead flying Bomber Task Forces to
their targets. The idea is to add mass and unpredictability to critical regions from bases in the United States. The endeavor
the force. A live-fire test has been successfully conducted. is intended to make U.S. bomber deployments less predict-
There is a strategic rationale for the innovation: While able, and to provide military leaders with more flexibility in
the service is waiting for future stealthy aircraft such as the deploying nuclear-capable B-52s, stealthy B-2s, and B-1s.
Next-Generation Air Dominance program and the B-21 For example, as tensions soared during Russia's invasion of
bomber, it will have fewer aircraft that can operate in harm's Ukraine, the iconic B-52 flew missions over Europe, along
way. Many of America's air bases are within missile range of with allied F-35 stealth fighters, pairing one of the oldest
its main adversaries. As a result, the Air Force must be able deterrents with one of the newest.
to function from "austere environments," or nontraditional Other moves to provide the Air Force with more flexibility
air bases. While logistical challenges remain, they are made are still evolving, including the Agile Combat Employment
easier when rugged, lower-cost aircraft like the C-130 can be (ACE) concept that is intended to enable the Air Force to
used as a strike platform. disperse its aircraft to a wider array of bases, some of them
"A C-130 only needs about 3,000 feet of dirt or straight expeditionary, and the plan to train multi-capable Airmen
stretch of road or whatever to generate sorties, which provides to reduce the U.S. military's footprint.
a complicated problem for our adversaries that might want to Yet another way to ease the burden on the existing U.S.
target our infrastructure," Lt. Gen. James. C. "Jim" Slife, head forces is to rely even more on America's allies and partners.
of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) said. In Europe, Sweden and Finland are set to join NATO, bringing
The C-17 also has short runway capability. Current tests are with them capable air forces. Finland has 64 F-35s on order.
working toward six weapon configurations for the C-130 and Sweden has a homegrown aircraft industry, which the U.S.
nine weapon configurations for the C-17, with the possibility Air Force has already turned to for a significant portion of its
to expand that in the future. new T-7 trainers. The Swedish government also dedicated
"Why would I drop a pallet of JASSMs out of C-130?" Mini- money to a project towards advancing its fighter designs
han asked rhetorically. "Frankly, I don't want to take the time after committing to join NATO. In the meantime, Sweden
to land, download it, have it find the army maneuvering unit, is procuring 60 of the latest E variants of its Gripen fighter.
upload it. And that tempo is going to be the tempo required The U.S. Air Force has stepped up exercises with its allies in
to win." Europe as other countries share more of the air power burden,
Slife said the service is learning to get past its “prefixes.” reported Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of both United
Airplanes with a “C” prefixes “carry cargo. What do we do States Air Forces in Europe–Air Forces Africa and NATO's
with 'B' airplanes? We drop bombs," he said. But, "the reality Allied Air Command.
is, they're all just airplanes" and can be used in many ways. America's allies plan to bolster their air forces, NATO
The KC-46 tanker, for example, will be pressed into service Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
as a communications node in the sky; there’s room on board, "I think that willingness to invest, to spend money in dif-
and it will already be in the area where “combat” aircraft will ficult times shows that the political leadership realizes what
be working. you do really makes a difference and is more important than
AFSOC also wants to test an amphibious modification on it has been for many, many years," Stoltenberg told staff at
its MC-130s, fitting the aircraft with massive pontoons and Allied Air Command in September.
thus expanding potential landing sites when a flat runway-like America's allies in the Indo-Pacific are also increasing their
field isn’t handy. This capability would be especially useful defense spending in response to a changing world.
in the Pacific, Slife noted. Taiwan, directly threatened by China, is set to massively
With an amphibious MC-130J program, the Air Force is boost its defense spending by nearly 14 percent in 2023. Aus-
testing the ability to bypass the need to land at all—at least tralia signed a defense partnership with the United Kingdom
on a runway. However, that would be a niche capability set and the U.S., abbreviated to AUKUS, that will enable it to field
aside for AFSOC. its own nuclear-powered submarines for the first time. It
Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr. said the service also includes partnerships in other areas, including artificial
is still exploring how much adapting existing aircraft to new intelligence, autonomous systems, hypersonic missiles, and
roles would be "a complete part of the Air Force." undersea technologies, among other areas. Japan, whose
Still, complicating enemy targeting—and imposing cost public has long resisted non-domestic defense activities since
on the adversary—is an attractive option."It's the multi-ca- World War II, aims to double its defense spending to 2 percent
pability of a platform to provide us the opportunity, budget of gross domestic product within five years. In addition, Japan
resourcing or not," Brown said. "They've got to account for is working on developing its first-ever indigenously produced
these things." stealth fighter for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.
While putting cruise missiles on cargo planes may expand "When you're operating in a tough neighborhood, travel
the number of targets an enemy must go after, the Air Force with friends who know how to fight," said Gen. Mark D. Kelly,
would still need to buy the weapons. In the case of the JASSM head of Air Combat Command.
and JASSM-ER, the cost is upward of $1 million per missile. To make the most of the U.S. alliances, the Air Force needs
"If … we start buying significant numbers of standoff to bring its allies into planning and development at every
weapons, I think it can really make an important con- stage. "They're more likely to buy into something if they
tribution to denying the enemy invasion," said David A. felt like a part of the process," Brown said. Even the idea of
Ochmanek, a senior researcher at the Rand Corp., former deploying palletized munitions has been proposed as a way
senior Defense Department official, and U.S. Air Force for partners to boost their firepower.
Some experts caution that flexibility initiatives like ACE, challenges. But we're not solving them with this approach."
while worthy, do not eliminate the need to pursue more The Air Force says that preparing for Chinese and Russian
far-reaching efforts to develop new weapons systems, com- challenges will require adaptation after two decades of flying
mand and control, and operational concepts to deal with the in uncontested skies from secure bases to fight against ill-
growing threat from China and Russia. equipped extremists in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
"We're faced with an enemy that's confronting us with chal- The service wants to create a culture of innovation. If so, the
lenges that, at least for the Air Force, are almost existential in best time for test runs is before the shooting starts.
nature," said Ochmanek. "What I'm hearing about flexibility is "I'd rather explore some of these opportunities when we're
we're kind of tinkering at the margins to try and mitigate those not in conflict versus trying to do it all in conflict," Brown said. J
Advancing Toward the New

Collaborative Combat Aircraft
Uncrewed “Col-
laborative Combat
Aircraft” (as depicted
in this illustration)
will soon be a major
part of the Air Force
fleet, but there’s a
debate over how to
introduce them.
By John A. Tirpak Lockheed Martin illustration

use to make their own investments. And I think they’ve reacted
to that … not just parroting back” he said, but “bringing forward
The Air Force wants to develop and build a large number some innovative ideas that we certainly want to consider. I’m
of uncrewed airplanes to build capacity, augment the existing encouraged by that.”
fighter fleet, and impose costs on a potential enemy. But how it He’s also admonished industry “repeatedly…[that] I don’t
will go about developing and introducing what are now known want you waiting for the RFP to come out. ... If we adopt your
as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and the form they’ll solution to our problems, that probably gives you a head start.
take, is still very much a matter of discussion and debate. It’s in your interest to be thinking ahead of us and giving us
Air Force leaders at the 2022 AFA Air, Space & Cyber Con- creative ideas.”
ference saw a wide diversity of proposed CCAs at contractor As the concept now stands, he explained, a crewed fighter,
booths in the exhibit hall. Ever since Air Force Secretary Frank “whether it’s NGAD [the Next-Generation Air Dominance
Kendall named CCAs one of his seven “operational impera- system] or possibly the F-35 or even the F-15EX—is going to
tives” the service must field to deter China, the Gold Rush has be accompanied by, let’s say one to five uncrewed aircraft …
been on to meet the Air Force’s need. that the manned aircraft will control.” The crewed fighters will
But service leaders have so far not bounded what a CCA be “the quarterback, or play-caller for that formation.” The
will be; only that the Air Force must start testing them in the uncrewed airplanes will have “a variety of mission systems
next couple of years, and have them in the force in meaningful and sensors, including weapons. And you can employ them
numbers by the end of the decade. in very creative ways.”
Industry has put forward ideas ranging from inexpensive, This sets “a very difficult problem for the adversary,” Kendall
controllable aircraft that are only slightly more sophisticated said. “He has to regard every single one of those platforms as
than expendable missiles, all the way up to highly sophisticated, equally a threat. And so, he can’t neglect any of them.” The
stealthy platforms that could fly well ahead of the main fleet, CCAs also offer a clean slate to write new air combat tactics,
collecting information, suppressing defenses and acting as Kendall noted.
pathfinders. “So, we have a lot to work our way through to develop this
Kendall told reporters in a press conference that in the Op- and field it. And there are a lot of unknown questions about
erational Imperatives, “I defined the problems that we’re trying how far we can go.”
to solve, and that gave industry some information that they can He said he’s got the Air Force Scientific Advisor Board
“working on the task of what we should shoot for, in our first time frame,” he said.
substantiation of the kind of concept I just described. And I Given that CCAs come out of Kendall’s operational impera-
think we can go pretty far.” tive, and that requirements usually come from a user command,
What Kendall doesn’t want to do is “over-reach with the first Hunter was asked if Air Combat Command is being handed a
ones,” but rather to try to field something quickly, with more requirement, top-down.
sophistication possibly coming later. But “we want it to be very “The requirements community was an integral part” of creat-
cost-effective,” he said. ing the operational imperatives, Hunter answered. “So, I would
“You can get big operational exchange advantages … and say that, as far as I can tell, we have very strong buy-in from the
cost-effectiveness advantages out of this concept. Our anal- requirements community, [and] from ACC , as to the need for
ysis shows that’s definitely true. And the technology is there a CCA, the utility of a CCA, and continuous input on exactly
to support it.” what kinds of missions CCAs can perform.” He added that “we
He has previously said that most of the Operational Impera- remain engaged continuously” with the user on requirements.
tives were based on rapidly maturing technologies in develop- He acknowledged, though, that there is “cultural resistance”
ment with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The CCA idea is to CCAs.
possible because AFRL has nurtured its Skyborg airplane-flying, “There has been cultural resistance to uncrewed aircraft as
artificial intelligence system to an advanced point. long as there have been uncrewed aircraft,” Hunter asserted.
Gina Ortiz-Jones, undersecretary of the Air Force, empha- “Some of this is human nature. Change is hard. It is in every
sized to reporters that “we’re not talking about less pilots” in aspect of our business.”
the service. “We’re talking about a different way that we employ That requires strong top-down, “strong leadership support to
CCAs that augment the capabilities that we currently have.” overcome the cultural barriers that are sometimes there when
Andrew Hunter, an Air Force acquisition executive, told it comes to uncrewed aircraft.”
reporters that “given the timelines that we’re working on … He said there’s such support from Kendall, from Chief of
the first thing is to field something meaningful in the next Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and from ACC’s Commander,
several years, due to the threat. So that’s absolutely going to Gen. Mark D. Kelly. “And we need that.”
be the early focus.” Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, head of Air Force Materiel Com-
Hunter said the Air Force isn’t necessarily looking at multiple mand, told reporters that “we know through modeling and
types of CCA platforms. simulation that there’s value in teaming crewed and uncrewed
“It’s more about accomplishing the mission,” he said. The aircraft. So the question becomes, what do the numbers look
CCA might be a single platform with modular elements, or “it like, and what does the mission package look like? That work
may be the case that there may be multiple platforms. And is not yet completed.”
that’s something we’ll figure out over time. We’ll work with In his opinion, “I think it’s multiple mission packages. I don’t
industry to identify what is the most effective mix of vehicles think it’s going to be just one thing,” but it’s possible CCAs may
and mission systems.” Mission systems, he said, are “a big part be a single airframe with modular mission packages.
of the puzzle.” A certainty is that the CCA will be built with “digital en-
There are likely to be “iterations” of the system, Hunter said. gineering, agile software development, [and] open systems
“But the highest priority is to field a capable CCA that can team architecture. CCA will be founded on that.”
with our manned platforms in the earliest time frame” possible. There’s no question that CCAs are coming, and will be a big
Funding for basic work will come in the fiscal 2024 budget, part of the future Air Force, Kelly said.
Hunter said, moving toward fielding “in the ’24 POM,” or pro- “Everyone is in agreement” about that, he told reporters at
gram objective memoranda, a five-year plan. the conference.
The idea for CCAs came out of the NGAD program which What he’s concerned about is that USAF may rush to field
will need to function as a family of systems, he said, and that such systems and may in the process get the concept wrong and
in turn requires “operating in denied airspace and making sure have to go back start again. He’s advocating a building block,
we have the ability to establish freedom of action, freedom of iterative approach to fielding the aircraft, with each step defined
maneuver for U.S. forces.” Inherent to that is survivability and by aircrews actually working with prototypes and lending their
ability to communicate back to friendly forces, but Hunter ideas and experience to the process.
would not comment on “how exactly CCA will do that.” “The captains will lead us in this,” Kelly said, referring to the
“Also, there’s the issue of scale,” he said. “A lot of the things Weapons School experts and veterans of Red Flag exercises. He
that are out there aren’t necessarily … production (ready).” wants to “get the tools to the Airman and get out of their way.
But “I want to foot-stomp: this is an acquisition program,” Let them iterate and innovate.”
Hunter said. The Air Force may not use “other transactional Each iteration should be inserted “into the mix,”—and the
authorities” of the kinds that have been used in recent years lessons learned—he said, adding that he’s certain “if we try to
to accelerate programs. Such “OTAs” are typically “about pro- foist this” on combat pilots “and tell them how to do it, we’ll
totypes [and] experimentation,” Hunter said. mess this up.” Rather than “swing for the fence” and quickly
“We will choose our [acquisition] tool sets to be aligned” develop what he called an “exquisite” capability, the Air Force
with the objective of developing and fielding “on a near-term should “get some singles and folks on base and try to iterate our
timeline.” way there.” He doesn’t want “an exquisite miss,” partly because
Hunter said the Air Force is “open” to collaborating with allies “exquisite means exquisite pricing.”
and partners on such systems, but if they are to be fielded in He also said the CCA has to be developed in lockstep with
numbers, the system will have to comply with laws requiring the all-domain command and control system and communica-
certain levels of U.S. content, and be built in the U.S. tions that can work in denied airspace through heavy jamming.
“There is an implicit competition” already underway, “I could have a CCA that could punch into really, really highly
Hunter said. “All the main players are aware of that, and I am defended … airspace, but if I don’t have resilient comms, and
confident we will be able to field something in a very relevant that thing doesn’t know how to phone home … I don’t get it
home.” off the radars, put on the jammers.”
He also noted that uncrewed, armed aircraft can only operate He urged contractors not to “lock it in” to a particular mis-
from a few Air Force bases nationwide that are immediately sion.
adjacent to restricted airspace; they are not yet FAA-cleared to “If we lock ourselves into” a particular mission or capability,
operate in regular airspace, and that’s a hindrance to developing the CCA could be a “race to failure,” he warned.
a useful capability. If the Air Force guesses wrong, “we have to go back to the
“You can race down the track of autonomy,” Kelly said, but start,” costing money and time the Air Force can’t afford to
if the authority to operate unrestricted doesn’t come with the waste.
hardware, the concept will fail. Nevertheless, he agrees with Kendall that it’s time to “get
“I’ve got to have autonomy, authority, and resilient comms” past the PowerPoint slides” and start producing something.
if CCAs are to be a success, Kelly said. “He’s right, there’s enough out there that we can start iter-
Companies looking toward a “clean sheet” CCA should em- ating now.”
phasize iteration and modularity, he said, with interchangeable Kendall said, “I’m convinced that we should move in this
sensors, jammers, and other mission items. Operators should direction, and we’re going to do it, under any budgetary future
be able to “unlock a nose, bolt on another nose … quickly take that I can imagine.” J
The Story Behind the Space Force's

New Official Song
By Amanda Miller
James Teachenor was living in Nashville

in 2015 and browsing Craigslist for vintage
guitars when he spotted the unlikely ad
that led to his occupying a unique place
in military history.
Mike Tsukamoto Air & Space Forces Magazine

The Air Force Academy’s country band
Wild Blue Country needed a lead vocalist.
Teachenor later found out the ad was only
up for a matter of hours.
“It wasn’t supposed to be advertised that
way,” he recalled while headed back home
to Nashville from AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber
Conference with his wife and two teenage
kids. “For whatever reason, I saw it in that
small amount of time, and I called Colora-
do Springs and asked if it was legitimate.”
After a few more questions, “I put Colora-
James Teachenor, composer of "Semper Supra"—the new Space Force song—leads
do Springs’ weather on my phone, because
the audience in singing it at the AFA conference.
I knew we were going to Colorado Springs,”
he recalled. Without having yet auditioned,
“I knew that was part of my path.” mond and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A.
He became a senior Airman with the band, which per- Towberman at that time. As Teachenor’s enlistment wound
formed at events for both the Air Force Academy and what down in 2019, he even went along on a trip with the two
was then Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., home to the Space leaders to Thule Air Base in Greenland, which performs
Force’s predecessor, Air Force Space Command. missions in space surveillance and missile defense.
Given that this frequently put him in contact with mil- “I got to see so much of what our now-Guardians—but at
itary space personnel, it’s hard to imagine anyone better the time they were Airmen—do and just was blown away by
positioned to supply the words and melody to the Space their mission,” Teachenor said. He felt like the trip “had a lot
Force’s new official song, “Semper Supra,” which debuted to do with how the song was written because I saw firsthand
at the conference. just the precision and the … amazing assets that we have
Together with a Coast Guard trombonist who doubles as in our folks who wear the uniform. And our civilians, too.”
musical arranger, Teachenor composed ‘Semper Supra’ to Teachenor and his family went back to Nashville following
join the likes of the Air Force’s “U.S. Air Force”—aka “Wild the conclusion of his enlistment, and in December 2019, the
Blue Yonder.” Space Force came to be.
“What was very interesting about my time of service was “Several folks reached out and said, ‘Hey, you know,
I knew what the space capabilities were for space operators the Space Force is actually going to be a branch—are you
before they were Guardians,” Teachenor said. He also met thinking about writing a song?’”
today’s Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Ray- He didn’t laugh off the idea but “eventually General Ray-
mond and Chief Towberman reached out to me and said, harmonies underneath it. And sometimes there’s harmony
‘Hey, would you consider writing something and just, you that is obvious, and sometimes there’s harmony that makes
know, give us an option?’” sense but is unexpected,” said Nelson.
Feeling simply “honored and thankful just to even throw He would ultimately compose 30 parts for a full military
something in there,” Teachenor estimated that by about band, from the four-part vocal harmony performed at the
February 2020, the song was largely complete. Sept. 20 premiere by the Air Force’s Singing Sergeants to
“I knew they wanted something that was singable and that counter-melodies—“there’s the main melody that you sing,
fit with the other anthems—the other service songs—and and there are multiple melodies going on at the same time
that would be something that could last. … They made it above and below that melody that makes it sound full and
very clear they wanted it to be timeless.” thick and [gives it] a traditional march sound.”
Months passed as the service narrowed down the sub- Having performed the “Armed Forces Medley” of service
missions until choosing Teachenor’s. songs at many military events, he well knew the need for
Throughout the process, Space Force leaders made only the Space Force’s to fit in with the other traditional military
one request, he said—to include the words “standing guard marches. At the same time, he wanted to write something
both night and day,” and to emphasize the service’s contin- “that was maybe a little unexpected and maybe not as ob-
uous mission of “making sure that we’re safe and protected vious and that had its own sounds as opposed to copying
all the time.” other military songs.”
“And so I looked at that line and changed it. I believe To strike the balance, “you have to know the tradition”—
it’s a better line for that,” said the recently elected county specifically that of American march composer John Philip
commissioner for Sumner County, Tenn. Sousa—“while knowing where you can break from it.”
Without such a well-trained ear, “not everyone might
THE SCORE notice it,” Nelson said, “but I think if you listen to it a few
Trombonist and arranger Coast Guard Chief Musician times, you start to notice, ‘Hey, that sounds a little fresh.’”
Sean Nelson responded to a callout to military band ar- He sang the first two lines to demonstrate:
rangers early in the Space Force’s search for a song. Now an “We’re the mighty watchful eye; Guardians above the
11-year member of the U.S. Coast Guard Band based at the blue. …
Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., he’d been “a “When you get to the word ‘blue,’ that chord is outside of
little green,” he said, when he originally auditioned for the the key—so it’s just a little bit surprising, I think. … Maybe
Air Force Band in the competitive national auditions that you get a little extra sparkle out of it.”
draw high-caliber musicians who ultimately “come in fully Nelson suspects—based on his experience performing
trained for the job.” in the Coast Guard Band, usually without singers—that
He’d composed the score to an organization’s mili- “the form that you’re going to hear the song in the most is
tary-style service song once before, updating the march of actually going to be without singing.”
the Commissioned Officer Corps of the National Oceanic Next he expects the military bands—along with school
and Atmospheric Administration. bands and choruses across the U.S.—to start adding “Semper
By 2020, he’d made a submission to the Space Force based Supra” to their medleys.
on a preliminary set of lyrics, and “the group listening really “Semper Supra”
liked my version.” In the spring of 2022, “they contacted We’re the mighty watchful eye
me again and said, ‘We’ve come up with this melody and Guardians beyond the blue
lyrics’—and it was Jamie’s lyrics and Jamie’s melody—‘and The invisible front line
we’re looking for somebody to complete the song, to har- Warfighters brave and true
monize it, to orchestrate it.’” Boldly reaching into space
Nelson liked the lack of any other musical contribution There’s no limit to our sky
such as a chord structure “because it allowed me to be Standing guard both night day
creative with it.” We’re the Space Force from on high
“What I would do is I would play the melody on the pi- Beyond the blue
ano, and I would sing it, and I would keep trying different The U.S. Space Force J
THE PACIFIC
Tensions in Europe, Pacific
W
By James C. Kitfield airfield. The need to complete the mission and relaunch was
urgent, and the aircrew had no time to ask for permission from
hen asked about the real-world demands driving higher command.
the Air Force’s new agile combat employment “So the loadmaster took risks, calculated risks, and in just
doctrine, Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, director of 55 minutes, he unloaded cargo that would normally take four
the Air National Guard, recalled the Guard C-17 hours to offload,” said Loh, speaking to reporters at AFA’s Air,
aircrew involved in 2021’s noncombat evacua- Space & Cyber Conference. “When I asked him how he did it,
tion from Afghanistan, the largest such airlift in U.S. history. the loadmaster told me, ‘Sir, you don’t want to know what I had
Once on the ground at a chaotic Kabul airport that was taking to do to get that job done.’ But I wanted to hear—because I can’t
incoming fire, the C-17 initially taxied to the wrong side of the afford to have someone in the chain of command above him
(L-r) Lt. Gen. John
Healy, Chief, Air Force
Reserve; Lt. Gen.
Michael Loh, Director,
ANG; and Maj. Gen.
Daryl L. Bohac,
Adjutant General,
Nebraska National
Guard, discuss the
Total Force adapting
to the Agile Combat
Jud McCrehin/Air & Space Forces Magazine

Employment model.
who would stifle that kind of ingenuity. The Afghan evacuation Guam, picked up a Marine Corps High-Mobility Artillery
was kind of the ‘Wild West,’ but that is the culture we need to Rocket System [HIMARS] rocket launcher, and transported it
harness in the future.” to another base for a simulated firing exercise before loading
With the Russian army pummeling Ukraine in Europe, and it back up and returning to Guam.
China increasingly threatening its neighbor Taiwan militarily “We have multiple units doing really good work taking small
in the Indo-Pacific, the Air National Guard has embraced the teams of multi-capable Airmen and moving them forward
culture of can-do innovation at the core of ACE. quickly,” said Loh. “I spoke with an aircraft maintainer, for in-
“Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr. has said stance, who had qualified herself on four specialties involved
we have to ‘accelerate change or lose,’ and that has led to a whole in maintaining the F-35 aircraft. So when you consider the high
new mindset in the Air Guard,” Loh said. “We are getting after experience level of Air Guard personnel to begin with, and then
new ways of doing things that will make us more survivable in a add in the experience from their civilian jobs, we have a unique
contested environment.” ability to put together teams of really multi-capable Airmen for
Earlier this year, Vermont’s 158th Fighter Wing completed mission success.”
the National Guard’s first overseas deployment of the F-35A Increasingly the Air Guard has embraced the ACE operational
Lightning II, for instance. Just a week after arriving in Germany, doctrine, he noted, that focuses on small teams and a mindset
it had fighters in the skies over the Baltics to reassure NATO allies that mission accomplishment takes priority over all else. “Be-
nervous about Russia’s aggression next door in Ukraine. cause with small teams, if someone gets sick or even killed, you
In the Indo-Pacific, the Hawaii Air National Guard’s 199th still have to work together to solve problems and accomplish
Fighter Squadron has experimented with deploying its F-22A the mission,” said Loh. “What we can’t do is let this model turn
Raptors supported by just one pallet of parts and equipment into an exercise of just asking our Airmen to do more with less.
that can be moved by a C-130 transport or even a Chinook Some of them are concerned about that, and we need to make
helicopter. In June, two Air National Guard C-130s flew to clear that is not the model.” J
SPACE
AFGSC Launches Second

Minuteman III Test in Three Weeks
By Greg Hadley
A
That’s the same location where the previous test launch,
which took place Aug. 16, landed.
ir Force Global Strike Command launched an un- This latest launch was overseen by the 576th Flight Test
armed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic Squadron, stationed at Vandenberg, with support from Airmen
missile from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., from the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base,
on Sept. 7—its second test launch in three weeks. Mont., 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.,
The ICBM launched at 1:13 a.m. Pacific time with and 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D. Space Force
three test re-entry vehicles, according to an AFGSC release. Col. Bryan Titus, vice commander of Space Launch Delta 30,
The vehicles traveled some 4,200 miles before landing in the was the launch decision authority.
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. “We have had a busy test schedule just in the past few months
and I am in awe of the way our team has per-
formed during each mission,” Col. Christopher
Cruise, 576th Flight Test Squadron commander,
said in a statement. “Today’s launch sends a
visible message of assurance to our allies, and
I couldn’t be more proud of the mission of
continued deterrence this launch represents.”
The two tests come more than a year after the
last publicly announced test launch in August
Airman 1st Class Ryan Quijas

2021. Previously scheduled tests were either
canceled or postponed by President Joe Biden’s
administration in an effort to avoid potential
miscommunication and escalation with Russia
and China.
The first instance, in March, came in the early
days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Russian
President Vladimir Putin raised tensions by
putting his nuclear forces on high alert. The An Air Force Global Strike Command unarmed Minuteman III Intercontinental
second, in early August, came as China launched Ballistic Missile launches during an operational test at 1:13 A.M. on Sept. 7 at
military exercises around Taiwan in retaliation Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.
for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Nancy Pe- “is not the result of current world events.” The command has
losi (D-Calif.), leading a congressional delegation on a visit conducted tests in quick succession before. In May 2019,
to the island. AFGSC launched two Minuteman IIIs in the span of less than
AFGSC has repeatedly emphasized that any test launch two weeks. J
‘We’re Not Ready’ to Fight China in

Space and Cyber
By Chris Gordon

The United States is unprepared for a wartime fight with
a peer adversary in the space and cyber domains, top U.S.
generals said Sept. 20 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
“The answer is no, we’re not ready,” Lt. Gen. Leah G. Laud-
erback, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveil-
lance, reconnaissance, and cyber effects, said when posed the
question by Lauren Barrett Knausenberger, the Department
of the Air Force’s chief information officer.
At the end of 2015, the Chinese stood up the People’s Lib-
eration Army Strategic Support Force (SSF). This newest part
of China’s armed forces focuses on the “strategic frontiers” of
space and cyber, including electromagnetic and information USAF must move faster toward an interconnected military to
warfare. keep pace with China and Russia said Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback,
Partially in response to these increased capabilities, the U.S. Deputy Chief of Staff for ISR and Cyber Effects Operations.
Space Force was created in 2019.
“As we pivot to China, what gives me concern is how fast whether it’s via social networks, devices, or the information
they’re moving,” said Space Force Brig. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, that you’re using to accomplish your mission.”
the service’s director of intelligence, surveillance, and recon- But the most concerning element of the Chinese SSF’s role
naissance. “We have to tell that story. Because that’s the story has not been tested. The Department of Defense has a plan
that I think people who make resource decisions need to hear.” to connect all its data in a concept known as joint all-domain
According to Gagnon, the Chinese have over 260 satellites command and control (JADC2). The SSF’s brief is to be able
surveilling the Pacific. to disrupt such a network.
“Why? To provide warning and to provide strike capability The U.S. still has much work to do to protect and advance
if directed by leadership,” he said. its electromagnetic spectrum operations, a key pillar for an
The threat is a current one, not a distant prospect. interconnected military.
“We’re talking about the PRC, and Russia, and think about “We are nowhere near where we need to be with that,”
the spectrum of conflict. We clearly are in competition with Lauderback said. “We are just starting the sprint with the ac-
both,” Lt. Gen. Kevin B. Kennedy Jr., commander of Air Forces quisition community and with the operational community.
Cyber, told a room of service members. “We’re being targeted. … It is something that we do not have a deep bench on at all.
You, personally, are being targeted right now by our adversaries And we’ve got to do it.” J
ACQUISITION
Van Ovost: Time to Invest in Next

Generation of Tankers, Airlifters
By Greg Hadley

he Air Force needs to start investing in its “next gen-
eration of strategic mobility and refueling assets,” U.S.
Transportation Command boss Gen. Jacqueline D.
Van Ovost said Sept. 20—and that means replacing
the two pillars of those respective fleets.
“The C-17 has demonstrated its merits countless times, but
the last one was delivered to the Air Force in 2013,” Van Ovost
told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “When
we receive the last KC-46 at the end of this decade, we will still
have hundreds of Eisenhower-era KC-135s in our fleet that
must be recapitalized.”
Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander U.S. Transportation
AERIAL REFUELING Command, said the Air Force needs look for successors to the
In June, the Air Force sent a request for information to the current fleet of airlifters, while also remaining fit to fight.
aviation industry launching the Advanced Aerial Refueling
Family of Systems (AAR FoS) program. The program, intended like multiple things. It could look like a loyal wingman. It could
to develop new and existing technologies to go on both cur- look like you’re on the network and someone else on that
rent tankers and future ones, detailed some of the attributes network sees it and takes care of it, and they aren’t anywhere
it needs, including connectivity, survivability, and increased close to you.”
situational awareness. All of those requirements, however, aren’t locked in, and
Van Ovost called those required attributes “heartening” Van Ovost said TRANSCOM will likely conduct wargames to
and detailed how TRANSCOM helped shape them with its test them in “more of a final stage.”
own studies.
“We’ve been working with [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command], MOBILITY
PACAF in particular, on how we would employ those airplanes While the push to replace the 60-year-old KC-135 has been
… and what environment they will be in and what we’re refu- going on for years now, the C-17 Globemaster III is relatively new
eling,” Van Ovost said. “It really sort of calculates what kind of in comparison, and the Air Force hasn’t sought to cut its fleet.
airplanes we need, and in what positions.” The simulations also But while the average C-17 is decades younger than the
show whether “you can modulate how much more fuel they KC-135, the airlifter has been used hard—with no obvious
take; or if they take less fuel, would they have this or that, [and] immediate successor.
what value would that be to the battlefield.” “It’s been critical to the fight. But I’m aware that we’re using
Air Mobility Command, the Air Staff, and the Office of the them a lot, and there are no [active production lines] for a ca-
Secretary of Defense receive the results of those sturies, Van pability like that—a roll-on, roll-off kind of capability” versus
Ovost said, and will help inform the requirements for the ser- lifting, Van Ovost said of the C-17. “It makes a huge difference
vice’s KC-Y “bridge tanker” and KC-Z programs. Requirements for throughput if you can roll-on, roll-off an airplane.”
for KC-Y are set to be unveiled this fall, while work on the KC-Z Van Ovost also noted that the C-5 Galaxy, the Air Force’s
future tanker begins in 2023, officials have said. largest airlifter, isn’t “getting any younger, either,” heightening
Van Ovost also detailed some of the capabilities she believes the importance of keeping the C-17 fleet airworthy.
future tankers will need. The Air Force has articulated plans to keep the C-17 in service
“I can tell you, spoiler alert, it’s got to be connected like the through the 2050s—but Van Ovost suggested that TRANSCOM
KC-46,” Van Ovost said. “Gone are the days where you can is already looking ahead to its successor.
just go out there and go to an anchor orbit and just wait for “We need to be able to … consider in the concepts looking
someone to come. It has to be connected and have some sort forward, how much stuff are we moving forward, what kinds
of battlespace awareness, even if it’s MacGyvered on … because of stuff, and what kinds of capabilities that airplane will need?”
that is key to survivability.” said Van Ovost. “So as we do these studies, we keep the airlift in
On top of that, maneuverability will matter so that the aircraft the fight, and we keep pushing to the Air Force and refreshing
can be “in the fight, literally linked to everybody so that it can what we think the next airlifter should look like.”
be of more value,” according to Van Ovost. What exactly that will be, Van Ovost didn’t say. But she did
And if tankers are in the fight, they’ll need some form of point to the Air Force’s operational concept of agile combat
defense. employment—emphasizing smaller teams of multi-capable
“I’m not saying you have to have an onboard defense, but Airmen who can operate in remote or austere locations—along
have a defense,” Van Ovost said. “What is it? What’s the spec- with similar ideas from the other services, as what will “really
trum defense? What’s the kinetic defense? But that could look define” the aircraft’s requirement. J
Acquisition Inflation Being Managed on a
Case-by-Case Basis, Hunter Says
By John A. Tirpak “try to understand how” to reply “should
those requests come about and what are
Despite inflation at levels not seen in the natural channels that exist” to deal
decades, Air Force primes have yet to with them. LaPlante’s guidance will tell
demand major adjustments to existing contractors, “this is how you ask us.”
contracts, but there are concerns about Hunter acknowledged that for those
lower-tier vendors, Air Force service ac- “high dollar value” contracts still in ne-
quisition executive Andrew P. Hunter said. gotiation, “we do see that there are higher
Speaking with reporters at AFA’s Air, dollar values than we anticipated.”
Space & Cyber Conference, Hunter said In all cases, the Air Force will have to
the structure of contracts usually means work to ensure that “the costs that are be-
the company “has to make a request” for ing cited to us are supported by the data.”
inflation adjustments. Hunter said the Air Force does not have
Staff Sgt. Chad Trujilo

“The contractor has to come forward direct visibility into the health of subcon-
and say, ‘These are the costs that we are tractors, especially at the lowest level of
seeing—we need some kind of adjust- supply, and so is paying close attention
ment,’” he explained. But “we haven’t had to what is being said at industry days,
much of that … yet.” through trade associations “that focus
The Air Force is also not planning a large Andrew Hunter, Air Force acquisition on the supply chain” and through small
“across-the-board, everyone-gets-an-ad- chief, says USAF may help contractors business advocates.
justment” action, because each contract is with inflation: if they ask, and can docu- “We are listening carefully,” he said.
unique, and inflation is affecting various ment why it’s deserved. “We” and Air Force Materiel Command
programs and companies differently. “have our ear to the ground.”
“Not everyone has been impacted in the same way. … The But primes are also being reminded that they are “respon-
impacts are pretty broad, but they’re not the same magnitude sible for their subs; that’s a big part of what they get paid to
for everyone,” he said. do,” Hunter noted.
“The issue is fixed-price contracts,” Hunter continued. “We are … instructing the primes that they need to assure
While such agreements usually compel the vendor to absorb that their supply chain is going to be able to deliver,” he said.
inflation losses, there may be ways to mitigate them, depend- “If there are companies at risk because of inflation, you need
ing on the needs of the service and other factors, he said. to identify that and look at ways to mitigate that.”
The Federal Acquisition Regulations were “developed Hunter said the Air Force has noticed that for some prod-
in the 1960s and ‘70s, when there was a lot of inflation, so ucts and components, “we … are starting to see substantial
mechanisms exist to deal with this,” he said. lead times to get things; much longer than is typical.” Conse-
Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William A. quently, “we may have to identify alternatives to meet program
LaPlante will issue guidance for all the military services to schedules.” J
C U LT U R E
Brown’s 5 Big Steps to

Transform the Air Force
By John A. Tirpak
A
to “collaborate within and throughout” to achieve its goals.
“We must change … if we want to preserve our way of life,”
ggressive competitors, limited resources, and ac- Brown said, invoking his “accelerate change or lose” mantra.
celerating technological advances compel the Air “We already know how to accelerate,” he said.
Force to rapidly transform, as it has during other The nation finds itself “in a pivotal period … one that is fun-
inflection points in its 75-year history, Chief of Staff damentally reshaping the international security landscape,”
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said. he noted. While the U.S. focused on “violent extremists” for
“We’ve done this before … we can do it again,” Brown said two decades, “our competitors focused on matching” the Air
in his keynote address to AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Force’s dominant capabilities.
Two years into his term, Brown said the Air Force can no The challenges are “not new … but the complexity and
longer assume it has dominant capabilities and must be will- combination” are greater, he said. While “Our tactical skills
ing to constantly rethink its technology and processes and are sharp … we need to reframe our thinking to meet the
In the lead-up to USAF’s founding in 1947,
service pioneers “pushed the limits, challenged
the status quo,” and proved the value of air pow-
er and the credibility of a separate air-oriented
military branch, he said. “Giants” in air power

history such as Hap Arnold and Billy Mitchell
“risked their reputations and their careers be-
cause they knew what was at stake.”
In the decades that followed, the Air Force
continued to innovate, he said. From the Berlin
Airlift to the creation of supersonic aircraft and
rapid development of intercontinental ballistic
missiles, the Air Force met the nation’s security
challenges, Brown said, and will do so again
now. The Air Force, industry, and academia
USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. says the Air Force culture has to change
pooled their talents to develop ICBMs in just
and laid out five ways to push decisions to lower levels and be quicker on the move.
two years, he noted.
To overcome greater numbers of Soviet forc-
challenges we will face in the future.” es, the Air Force invested in and rapidly fielded stealth aircraft
Brown said, “If we don’t get this right, together—if we fail and precision weapons, leading to its dominant performance
to adapt—we risk our national security, our ideals, and the in the 1991 Gulf War and across the ensuing 20 years, Brown
current rules-based international order.” said. In the Balkans, the Air Force used the B-2 stealth bomber
The Air Force’s cultural change will be in five areas, Brown for the first time and fielded an armed version of the Predator
said: remotely piloted aircraft “in just 39 days,” he continued.
■ Mission Command. “We rewrote Air Force Doctrine Today, the Air Force is again confronted with challenges to
Publication One,” Brown said, which requires “mutual trust, its ability to control the skies, defend the homeland, and pen-
shared understanding, and clear commander’s intent.” It etrate to any target it must hold at risk. It must not be daunted.
directs leaders to spell out their objectives for their Airmen “We’ve done this before,” he said. “We can do it again. … We
and “then get out of their way,” he added. “We might think must not rest on our laurels.”
this is intuitive; I assure you, it is not.” While still “the most respected Air Force and Space Force”
■ Force Generation. “We are transforming the way we in the world, Brown said that status must be earned. The path
deploy,” Brown said. The Air Force new Force Generation to do that is through ever-greater collaboration among the
Concept, or AFFORGEN, will be operational Oct. 1, defining services and with industry—and by empowering Airmen at
four stages of operational readiness: “Prepare, Ready, Avail- every level to figure out solutions that achieve their com-
able to Commit, and Reset.” Each stage runs six months in an manders’ intent.
overall two-year cycle for every unit. The goal of this system Brown said he will forgive mistakes made in pursuit of true
is to establish “discipline” in parsing air power in sustainable innovations, “pushing through failure until finding success.”
ways, so commanders better understand the implications “This has always been in our DNA,” he added. “With every
for downstream readiness when selecting units to deploy. new trial, no matter how difficult, we proved we could rise
■ Agile Combat Employment. The old model of operating above any challenge … if we were willing to take risk.” Airmen
from large forward bases “will not work” because adversaries must feel free to “challenge the status quo.”
can focus their attacks on those few operational locations. Calling for experimentation, risk-taking, and “creating dis-
ACE will increase survivability by distributing forces over a ruption at all levels,” he directed Airmen to pursue faster and
wide and shifting area. It “requires us to be lighter, leaner, and better ways to accomplish the mission.
more agile,” Brown said, and he’s seen “great progress being “We have done this no matter how seemingly impossible”
made” in this area. Enabling capabilities and concepts will the challenges, he said.
include “command and control, logistics under attack, and Brown cited several examples of Airmen who have risen
missile defense, to name a few.” Helping Airman to become to this challenge, including Senior Master Sgt. Brent Kenney
more flexible and less narrow in their scope is a key to ACE. of the 52nd Fighter Wing, who came up with a way to create
Multi-capable Airmen are a key to making ACE work, Brown potable water at a remote location using solar fabric and “an
said. The shift to multi-capable Airmen is “not a checklist,” environmental water harvester,” saving USAF from having to
he said, but a mindset. dedicate “precious” cargo missions to delivering bottled water
■ Multi-capable Airmen. Brown said he wants to “crush and saving on diesel generators.
bureaucratic hurdles” that hold Airmen back from accom- Adaptation today requires “collective effort” and collabo-
plishing tasks outside their core specialties, creating a “more ration—both within the Air Force and with its partners and
agile and lethal force.” allies worldwide—to “understand the environment,” define
■ Applying the A-staff Construct at the Wing Level. In this the threat, share information, and “employ air power.”
model, A-1 is personnel, A-2 is intelligence, A-3 is operations, Toward that end, Brown is working toward a future force
and so on. Using the model, Airmen and USAF units will more he calls “Integrated by Design,” which will “start with allies
intuitively “plug into” the joint force when they deploy. This and partners in mind, versus … adapting to include partners
allows USAF to “train like we fight,” providing wings with and allies later.”
“more rapid decision-making” and better responsiveness The Air Force “can’t do this alone,” he said. ”We must accel-
and aligning them in a way that mirrors that of USAF Head- erate. Our window of opportunity is closing. … We have to …
quarters and the other joint forces. get beyond talking about what we want to do … and go do.” J
Armed and Dangerous
In Sky Warden, AFSOC gains a flexible new hunter-killer.
Air Tractor
Air Force Special Operations Command’s Sky Warden, built on the Air Tractor AT-802U single engine crop duster platform, has
multiple hardpoints to support sensors and weapons, so it can be tailored to a range of Special Forces missions. L3Harris beat
out several other competitors to win a 75-plane order.
By Hope Hodge Seck
A
austere and permissive environments that U.S. special
operations forces operate in routinely. In August 2022,
n eight-vehicle convoy of U.S. Special “Instead of nearly five years after the Tongo Tongo incident—and
Operations troops and Nigerien soldiers running a bill of two years after U.S. Special Operations Command
departed the village of Tongo Tongo in up to $150,000 launched a search for such a capability—SOCOM
October 2017, following a short resupply per hour for a selected a modified crop-duster from L3Harris for
stop a day after a failed raid on a target. complex stack the mission.
Almost immediately, the troops’ armorless pickup SOCOM will invest about $170 million to build
trucks and Toyota Land Cruisers were surrounded of air assets, 75 Sky Warden aircraft based on the Air Tractor sin-
by heavily armed militants from ISIS in the Greater the Sky War- gle-engine turboprop AT-802U. To start, Sky Warden
Sahara (ISIS-GS). On motorcycles and in pickups, den can fulfill will replace Air Force Special Operations Command’s
the militants overwhelmed and fragmented the much of the aging fleet of U-28A Draco ISR aircraft and in turn
convoy, killing four U.S. Soldiers and five Nigeriens. same for ... augment the Air Force’s remotely piloted MQ-9 Reap-
Investigators would later conclude the team had er drones. But AFSOC and other experts anticipate
been left totally unprotected from the air; a U.S. drone
pennies on the an expanding role for this simple platform, which
that tracked the convoy earlier in the mission had dollar.” requires a very small footprint to operate in the wild.
been sent north to the Mali border and when the —Retired Maj. Sky Warden is designed to “collapse the stack”
team had called for help, it took almost an hour for Gen. Michael of up to 20 ISR and armed defense aircraft that are
a French Mirage aircraft to reach the areas. Kingsley, former sometimes called in to support missions like the
The ambush highlighted a gap in U.S. military USAFRICOM failed 2017 operation in Tongo Tongo. Retired Air
capability—the lack of a small, nimble, and flexible Force Maj. Gen. Michael Kingsley, who led U.S. Africa
Armed Overwatch platform able to provide surveil- chief of staff Command prior to his 2016 retirement, said that stack
lance, close air support, and precision strike in the can include ISR assets like the Draco, unmanned
platforms like the Reaper, and manned fighters like the F-16 doesn’t require the kinds of maintenance support and facilities
to validate and act on intelligence. required of jet aircraft like the A-10 Thunderbolt. As a bonus, its
“We’re entering into a world now, where a majority of load capability and low operating costs make it a potential fuel
the fighters and other airplanes, to include remotely piloted supply platform; in a pinch, it could deliver enough fuel to fill
airplanes, are going to be focused elsewhere,” Kingsley said. the tanks of a UH-60 Black Hawk.
Russia’s war on Ukraine and China’s increased assertiveness in “There’s definitely room for expansion of mission capability,”
the Pacific is changing U.S. defense priorities, and counter-in- Flori said, citing the palletized munition initiative that has turned
surgency and counter-terrorism missions may not always be C-130s into makeshift bombers, capable of launching missiles
able to garner the attention and commitment of forces needed. and munitions from their cargo bays. “I think SOCOM and
“Instead of running a bill of up to $150,000 per hour for a AFSOC have a long, long history of doing this on our aircraft.”
complex stack of air assets, Kingsley said, the Sky Warden can AFSOC and the Air National Guard Bureau will stand up in
fulfill much of the same requirement for an hourly operating the second quarter of fiscal 2024 at Will Rogers Air National
cost in the low thousands—‘Pennies on the dollar.’” Guard Base, Okla., with an initial cadre of 24 U-28 and MC-12W
Kingsley has a history with the Air Tractor aircraft, having Liberty pilots. The unarmed MC-12 turboprops are Guard ISR
been a vice president at IOMax USA, which created an earlier planes. By 2029, the Air Force anticipates retiring the U-28s,
armed version of the Air Tractor flown by the United Arab with pilots transferring to other aircraft.
Emirates Air Force. “I think the experience you would gain on a U-28 as a senior
pilot or a command pilot would translate well to an Armed
PLANS FOR SKY WARDEN Overwatch squadron,” Flori noted. “Slightly different mission,
Sky Warden won out over five competing options using an but those experiences as an Airman still translate.”
Other Transaction Authority (OTA) competition intended to
accelerate acquisition. The first batch of seven aircraft are due THE AIRCRAFT
in fiscal 2023, and Air Force Special Operations Command Sky Warden isn’t really like anything else in the aircraft
anticipates 75 planes by the end of fiscal 2029. The 18th Special stack it’s supposed to replace. It has a crew of two compared
Operations Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin Air Force to the Draco’s four, and its 18-meter wingspan dwarfs that of
Base, Fla., will start putting the aircraft through its paces by an F-16. With chunky tires built for primitive airfields and a
the end of calendar 2023. Ahead of that, contractor and gov- NASCAR-style roll cage to protect the crew, “it’s structurally
ernment verification testing is already underway at L3Harris just a tank,” said John Totty, a former Army and Air Force pilot
facilities in Waco, Texas. who has helped with developmental test and demonstration
“We’re basically buying this complete production aircraft flights. “It’s a phenomenal airplane that will take a tremendous
off the shelf, like a fully mature aircraft,” said Maj. Alex Flori, amount of punishment.”
branch chief for Armed Overwatch requirements at headquar- Similar in size to the A-10, the beloved close air support
ters, AFSOC. platform that is sometimes criticized for flying too slow, Sky
AFSOC officials told Air and Space Forces Magazine to see the Warden is even slower: Its top speed of 213 knots is about half
platform as perfectly in tune with the Air Force’s Agile Combat that of the A-10. But its tailwheel design is well suited to austere
Employment concept for rapid, small-footprint deployments. environments, keeping the aircraft’s nose up during landings to
Because the plane is a relatively simple, low-maintenance air- ensure the prop stays clear of grass or other obstacles.
craft and can land and take off easily from unimproved roads, it “When I saw the aircraft, being a tail-dragger pilot, I loved
Senior Airman Vernon Walter III
The Air Force is replacing its aging U-28A Draco aircraft, like this one at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, with the new Sky
Warden planes, which are smaller, simpler, and less costly to operate.
L3Harris is
expanding
production
capacity and
hiring to modify
75 Sky Warden
aircraft for Air
Force Special
Operations
Command.
L3Harris
it,” said Totty, who previously flew Russian Antonov An-2 Colt can operate safely at 10,000 feet now and for a long time to come.
biplanes, another tailwheel aircraft that was adapted for military “The surface-to-air threat there is minimal—probably just
service. “And the fact that they could take this very utility-ori- small arms,” he said. “There might be a [rocket-propelled gre-
ented crop-duster, and turn it into a military machine, you nade] or two. But just saying they’re going to get and be able to
know, was really intriguing.” operate advanced shoulder-fired missiles against our aircraft,
Totty said the Air Tractor proved its low-maintenance bona- I’m a skeptic with that.”
fides in testing. At the joint exercise Bold Quest 21 in southern Kingsley said AFSOC’s purchase of Sky Warden is likely to
Indiana last November, he said, it supported Airmen, Marines, fuel interest in foreign military sales to allies such as Nigeria,
and other troops from 11 partner nations over nine days and and that their purchases will allow those countries to better
50 hours of flight time without any “squawks,” or mechanical control militants operating inside their borders.
issues. Advertised as able to spend eight hours airborne on Armed Overwatch was needed largely because the Air Force’s
station, Totty said testers found they could reliably get more fleet of 300 MQ-9 Reapers is already overtasked and costly to
than nine under the right conditions. They gave Sky Warden operate, which led to coverage gaps like the one in the case of
high marks for reliable performance and ease of maintainability, the Tongo Tongo ambush. But Sky Warden advocates see other
noting it needed little more than oil and tire changes between advantages, too.
flight days, he said. “In my world and the platforms I make, I’ll never make an
L3Harris gave Sky Warden two FMV ISR sensors; four secure airplane that only has one [electro-optical/infrared] sensor on
mission radios, in addition to its two standard air traffic con- it again,” said Luke Savoie, president of L3Harris Technologies
trol radios; Ku band and UHF satellite communications; Link and a former Air Force evaluator pilot. “It is very hard to main-
16 networking capability; and a Mobile Ad hoc Networking tain chain of custody of targets, to increase your situational
(MANET) digital radio that allows teams on the ground to awareness … especially after someone has come into an area
control and aim the mounted sensors and view the data the and left an area—and to make a decision—especially when
aircraft is collecting via a video feed on a tablet. you’re making a decision to shoot a weapon. It’s very hard to
Multiple hardpoints support a significant weapons load. do that with only one sensor.”
The aircraft can haul combat loads up to 6,000 pounds and The Sky Warden’s two EO/IR sensors compared to the MQ-
can launch GBU-12 Paveway II 500-pound bombs; AGM-114 9’s one mean it can track multiple objects with high fidelity
Hellfire Missiles; stand-off precision-guided munitions fired simultaneously, accelerating pilots reaction time, Savoie stated.
from 8x common launch tubes; and 70 mm rockets, such as the “Our time is measured in milliseconds, not seconds, for our
Hydra 70 or AGR-20 Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System, operators to observe and react to things that they see,” he said.
reportedly the Sky Warden’s primary armament. “So you’re not waiting on the latencies and the delays of getting
to someone looking at it on the other side of the planet.”
SKY WARDEN VS. MQ-9 Totty said there are also advantages in some cases to having
Loaded up with sensors and weapons stations, tough to a crew on scene versus operating an aircraft remotely.
destroy and easy to maintain, the Sky Warden checks the boxes “There are some risks involved anytime you deploy an
for its designated mission to protect exposed ground troops unmanned system, because you don’t have the aircrew on
and surveil targets in austere regions. Critics see its slow speed station, and you have to control that machine via a link,” he
and limited maneuverability as a vulnerability, making it a fat added. “In the Sky Warden, [there are] crew onboard who are
target in a world where sophisticated and powerful counter-air able to see and monitor ops within and outside the sensor
weapons are increasingly available. fields of view, with their hands on the flight controls so no one
But Kingsley, the former AFRICOM chief of staff, said in the else can interfere with what the aircraft’s going to do, and the
parts of Africa where Armed Overwatch is needed, Sky Warden targets that it services.”
SUCCEEDING WHERE OTHERS FAILED acquisitions officer for the Armed Overwatch branch, said in
Despite its estimation that Armed Overwatch was an urgent an interview.
need, SOCOM had to convince Congress and others. The fiscal “Some of the homework they provided us was to weigh risk/
2020 National Defense Authorization Act barred the Defense reward and was also to balance against what is the mission that
Department from investing in Armed Overwatch until an in- Armed Overwatch entails,” Moore said. “Once we were clear
dependent study validated the requirement and the Air Force’s on those definitions, we provided a good roadmap to pursue.”
inability to meet the need with existing aircraft. RAND com-
pleted the study in March of this year, but although the study BEYOND ARMED OVERWATCH
has not been publicly released, its impact is evident. Sky Warden may be a candidate to replace Javaman, a lit-
Both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal 2023 defense tle-mentioned MC-12W mission.
bill fund Armed Overwatch with the full $246 million requested “Everything that Javaman did, Sky Warden certainly can do
by DOD. That makes Sky Warden a rare success among at least with additional capability, because it brings the agile strike
half a dozen DOD efforts to purchase modified commercial capability,” Totty said.
aircraft for surveillance and attack mission. The most recent Savoie also expects the Defense Department’s commitment
bust was the Air Force’s Light Attack Experiment, which stalled to Sky Warden to affect international sales, instilling confidence
out after a decade of effort and hundreds of millions spent. in customers leery of investment in an off-the-shelf tactical
The Light Attack program culminated in a four-aircraft evalu- aircraft after the foundering of the Light Attack program. It’s
ation event in 2017, but a combination of confusion over how also a proof of concept, he added, for defining a problem and
the aircraft would be used and where it fell in the priority list developing a tailored solution, rather than settling for a more
ultimately meant it did not move forward. Air Tractor’s armed accessible proximate fit.
AT-802U was an unsuccessful competitor in that competition. It’s part of that entire paradigm shift that we’re doing of how
Savoie said Armed Overwatch benefited from a clear and to fight a little bit differently, so the same type of things with the
coherent mission description and powerful advocacy from se- same effects, but approach those problems differently,” he said.
nior leaders such as AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. James C. Slife “And I love that the platform is kind of a forcing function for that.”
and SOCOM Commander Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, who Totty also expects Air Force and SOCOM operators to develop
each made passionate pleas to Congress in testimony last year. uses that haven’t even been imagined yet as they get acquainted
“I think you could look at the quotes from General Clarke at with the platform.
the time, you can look at the quotes from Lieutenant General “We’ve met all the requirements that they were looking for
Slife, and you can clearly see the articulated need, and how it fits in an airplane that will take the punishment over the long haul.
into their scheme of maneuver to the overall national defense They can rapidly deploy it; you can pull the wings off, you can
strategy,” Savoie said. “The continued war to counter violent ship the airplane somewhere. We’ve proven that they can do
extremists is a continuing mission step, but it has to be done that with a very low footprint,” he said. “But honestly, it’s engi-
with less assets than the conventional force needs to focus solely neered to go well beyond [requirements] knowing that when
on the near-peer or peer threat in [U.S. European Command] we put that airplane in the hands of these AFSOC aircrews and
or [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command]. Then, it makes perfect sense.” their ingenuity, and they start writing the tactics, techniques
Communication with Congress and responsiveness to law- and procedures for their mission set, that’s when we’re really
makers’ concerns was also key, Air Force Capt. Cory Moore, going to see the value.” J
Air Tractor AT-802U/Twitter
The AT-802U Sky Warden aircraft can be easily broken down and reassembled for transport.
Tom Reynolds/USAF
Chiefs Connected
Scott Ash/USAF
Gen. Michael E. Ryan Gen. David L. Goldfein
T
BY TOBIAS NAEGELE
he Air Force is a massive institution in a state of perpetual change, its many pieces operating in his father in that job. "They'll never make that mistake again," he says now, but not because of any rule.
unison and yet moving to their own unique rhythms. A continuous flow of new Airmen cycle The odds of an Airmen following his or her father into service remain higher than for the civilian pop-
into service—bright, eager, hopeful. Last year's models, now seasoned, move up a notch, the ulation at large, but surviving to four stars is itself a rarity and to be in the right place at the right time to
assembly line continuing as members are routed up, and out, over the course of 15 or 20 or 30 become Chief is as much luck as it is talent.
years. More common are the connections Chiefs have with other leaders who came before them, whether
But though the Air Force churns out Airmen with precision, it is not simply a machine. It is in its they served together in combat or on staffs. Assignment as a general's aide is not a guarantee of future
PART 3 OF A 4-PART SERIES own way a family, and the connections that span the generations, both by stars, but such exposure to the inner workings of the service can be foundational for future success.
blood and the unique relationships that grow out of shared service, add a Was it a coincidence that Gen. David L. Goldfein served under Ryan as an aide a couple of decades
human dimension that informs and softens the perpetual motion machine. before he became Chief himself? Hardly. Though Ryan and Goldfein hailed from different family lines,
Gen. Michael E. Ryan, Chief of Staff of the Air Force from 1997-2001, is the only Air Chief to succeed their intertwined bonds of service are just as unbreakable.
Gen. Michael E. Ryan, CSAF No. 16 (1997-2001) Congress and the public wanted accountability, and Cohen, Now for the first and only time in the history of the U.S.
Like Father, Like Son

a former Republican senator from Maine who had crossed armed forces, the son of a former service chief had advanced
party lines to join the Clinton administration, was willing to to reach the same position. What he inherited, though, was
pin the blame on the one-star commander on the scene, Brig. an Air Force in crisis.
A
Gen. Terryl Schwalier. Fogleman was not. In July 1997, Fogle- “I found my Air Force in free fall,” Ryan said in a recent in-
man elected to retire early. “My stock in trade after 34 years of terview. “There was no safety net. We didn’t have a stopgap.
s America rolled toward service is my military judgment and advice,” Fogleman wrote There was nothing that was going to keep it from continuing to
the end of the second to Airmen that July 30. Now, he wrote, “I may be out of step fall. We had become victims of our own success, in a way: We
millennium and the year with the times and some of the thinking of the establishment.” had gone and done the Gulf War, we had done Bosnia, touted
2000—Y2K, as it was Enter Gen. Michael E. Ryan. While not a stranger to Washing- as the war that was won by air alone.”
dubbed—President Bill ton—Ryan had been a military In the wake of those con-
Clinton was in his second four- assistant to Air Force Chief of “Being an Airman is being part of a team. flicts, American air power was
year term as President, Rep. Newt Staff Gen. Larry Welch (CSAF so overwhelmingly powerful
Gingrich was in his second two- No. 12) and for two Chairmen of “So in my mind, it's about being a trusted, trusted member of a team. and effective, its technology so
year term as Speaker of the House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gener- That’s what being an Airman is about. And it always has to be that obviously superior, the nation
and the Defense Department was als Colin Powell and John Sha- way because you’re never going to do it alone. You’re always going was taking that capability for
in trouble. Eight years after the fall likashvili—but he was returning to have to do it with others, and you’re going to have to trust them granted.
of the Berlin Wall, Americans were after three and a half years in and they need to trust you. You’re always going to have a wingman “We were faced with,
more interested in the new “dot- Europe, during which he had no matter what your job is. That’s what it means to me.” ‘where’s the peace dividend
com” boom than national defense. led the U.S. air campaign that here?’ And ‘where's the threat
Tom Reynolds/USAF
The post-Cold War drawdown that forced an end to the Bosnian civil war and led to the Dayton for the future?’”
began in 1991 had twisted mili- Peace Accords. That future looked busy to Ryan. Southern Europe, where
tary personnel policy such that it In Bosnia, Ryan had been left largely to his own devices. the former Yugoslavian states were still jockeying for control
seemed the armed forces were more “No one told me what to do. No one told me to put a work of border lands and where ethnic tensions that had been
focused on getting people out of plan together called [Operation] Deliberate Force,” he said. held in check for decades under decades of communist rule,
uniform than in recruiting members Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan is briefed by Lt. Col. Steve Rainey before take off in “I just did that on my own. No one tasked me to do that. And continued to unravel in violence. The Middle East, where
to join or stay in. an F-16 Fighting Falcon at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in January 2000. The two flew chase I picked every … aimpoint that we used in that war to avoid Operations Northern and Southern Watch continued un-
The Air Force suffered a 20 per- during an F-22 Raptor test mission. Building enough Raptors was a vexing challenge for Ryan civilian casualties because we couldn't be seen as being as abated, with no end in sight, and where Iran continued to
cent cut in the six years from 1991 and the Chiefs who followed him. bloodthirsty and as committing atrocities, as the participants pose a meddlesome threat requiring continuous U.S. military
to 1997, a loss of $18.3 billion a year. in that war had been [doing] to each other. In Srebrenica, they presence in the region.
The fighter force shed 1,800 jets in that time, a 40 percent reduc- national security, but couldn’t seem to convince the people killed maybe 6,000 Muslims. There was a horrible war. And Many also saw another potential threat rising on the far side
tion since 1987. The missions, however, continued: Somalia in who mattered—in particular, Defense Secretary William S. how do you stop a war? How do you end a war? We were able of the world. While Britain had turned Hong Kong into an elite
1992, Haiti in 1994, Bosnia in 1995, not to mention Operations Cohen—that he was not some Chicken Little warning that the to do it by taking away the Bosnian Serbs’ capability to fight.” island city-state, an international economic powerhouse, time
Northern and Southern Watch, no-fly-zone enforcement over sky was falling. Worse, he was also butting heads with Cohen Bosnia, Ryan said, was his greatest legacy. But he himself was running out on a 99-year agreement that allowed British
northern and southern Iraq, which demanded continuous U.S. over personnel matters in the aftermath of the terrorist attack had descended from a unique Air Force legacy, having spent rule. On July 1, 1997, weeks before Fogleman retired and just
Air Force presence. on Khobar Towers, a military housing complex in Dhahran, his entire life within the bubble of the Air Force as the son of months before Ryan took over as CSAF, the United Kingdom
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, nearly Saudi Arabia, where a truck bombing in 1996 had killed 19 a decorated bomber pilot, Gen. John D. Ryan (CSAF No. 7). completed the ceremonial transfer of power in Hong Kong,
three years into his own four-year tour, was in a bind. He U.S. Airmen and wounded 400 American and allied military The elder Ryan became Chief in 1969 when Mike was a young returning sovereignty to China after a century and a half of
believed the cuts to the Air Force were dangerous to U.S. and civilian personnel. captain flying F-4s at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. British rule. Now, just eight years removed from the Tiananmen
Square massacre where China’s People’s Liberation Army had and no one would take that on.”
brutally crushed a civilian protest, China was taking possession Ryan believed the AEF construct “would have legs” and
of a vital connection to world financial markets. Hong Kong's survive because “it was designed to be able to handle an op
ticket to modernize its economy, and it pledged to uphold a tempo that was constant, because you could put two AEFs
“One Country, Two Systems” policy that would protect Hong online at any one time, and that was plenty for what was going
Kong’s independence. on. And if you had the big one, we’d go back to mobilize, just
But China was not Ryan’s worry. His eyes were set firmly like for every other war we’d ever had.”
closer to home. Defining an AEF for outsiders was never as simple as defin-
“I was terribly worried about how to protect the Air Force,” ing a carrier battle group, however. A carrier battle group could
Ryan recalls now. “How do we stabilize this thing so it can’t be seen in a photograph, and that image could be held in the
just keep being eaten away?” mind’s eye. When the Air Force laid out its AEFs, however, it
Every element of the Air Force was under attack. “Pieces lacked that visual element. Instead, it was a complicated list:
grabbed. Every piece of your force structure questioned,” Ryan combat, mobility, and “low-density/high-demand” forces,
recalled. Questions flew: “Why do you need that?” The entire delineated as wings, air groups, and squadrons, drawn from
service was on the defensive, Ryan described. “It was—it was the Active, Reserve, and Guard components, and organized
awful.” by date ranges. A separate list included support forces, orga-
From the outside, the Air Force seemed not to have any nized by duty location. To show all the pieces of all 10 AEFs
difficulty. There were plenty of planes—even if those planes required two-and-a-half printed magazine pages in Air Force
weren’t all interchangeable. The Air Force lacked a simple force Magazine’s Almanac; even then, one needed to view all three
structure that could be explained in building block form, like pages to understand the contents of a single AEF.
the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Army had divisions, Ryan’s AEF settled on deployment rotations of 90 to 120
which were not all equivalent, but at least sounded as if they days, another element that outsiders found difficult to fathom.
could be somewhat interchangeable. The Navy had carrier The Navy and Marine Corps used six-month rotations. But the
battle groups and a rotational model that resulted in predict- Air Force had set out to ensure units maintained proficiency
able deployment and maintenance cycles. The Marine Corps in the full range of missions each one might face. That drove
had Marine Expeditionary Forces, which worked similarly to the decision for short rotations. “We thought we could keep
the Navy model. proficiencies up if we had shorter deployments,” Ryan insist-
But the Air Force had been built around its bases, its forces ed. “You have readiness requirements you lose when you’re
tailorable to mission needs. So as demand rose and the service deployed. You don’t do certain things because of the kind of
shrank, cracks were beginning to show. Readiness and morale missions you’re force into when deployed, so you can lose
began to slide, right along with the declining budget. your proficiency after 120 days if you haven’t shot a missile,
Ryan noted how the Air Force built stand-in forces for those or refueled, or any number of kinds of things you’re required
times when the Navy could not provide aircraft carrier presence to [be able] to do.”
in the Persian Gulf. This was the Air Force being expeditionary But short cycles became unsustainable after 9/11, with the
in its own right, as it had been in World War I, in south Asia in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially when the Army found
World War II, and in the Middle East since Operations Desert itself forced to extend some deployments to 15 months, and to
Shield and Desert Storm. impose stop-loss orders that kept deployed Soldiers on Active
“I said, ‘What if we took our Air Force and cut it up in a way duty beyond their enlistment dates. Would Ryan do things
that we could form these AEFs—Air Expeditionary Forces?’” differently if he could go back and get a do-over? He’s not sure.
Ryan said. If that concept were applied not just for gap-fillers, He sees the argument for six-month deployments, as well as
but for all operations, he thought, it would benefit the Air the benefits of 120. “What kinds of deployments are you going
Force in myriad ways. “We could put some stability into our on? What kind of a beast are we feeding?”
operations, we could say this is what the Air Force is made The AEF construct survived the transition to Ryan’s successor
of—10 AEFs—and that’s something we can build a force as CSAF, Gen. John P. Jumper, but began to come apart under
structure against.” his successor, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz. Today, the Air Force
Brig. Gen. Charles F. Wald was Ryan’s special assistant for is trying to establish a new means of presenting forces. The
the upcoming quarterly defense review, and he asked Wald “force generation” model introduced late last year by CSAF
to work out how to make the concept work. The model Wald’s No. 22 Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. establishes four six-month
team built meant the AEF could be used to size the force, Ryan stages—commit, reset, prepare, and ready—for every unit, un-
said. “We used it as a force structuring tool, too, not just a tool derscoring that the requirement Ryan identified for stabilizing
to put stability into the rotations, but as a tool to say, ‘This is the force in the late 1990s endures, even if the solution has re-
how many F-22 squadrons we need.’” mained elusive over the quarter century since he became Chief.
When then Air Force was ordered to cut the original F-22 The undoing of the AEF may have been its flexibility, Ryan
planned purchase from 750, Ryan said, the Air Force used its suggests. “Flexibility is the enemy of stability,” he said. “And
10 AEF model to rationalize a new figure: Every AEF needed unfortunately, air power is very flexible.”
at least one squadron of F-22s, and every squadron needed
24 planes; add in 25 percent more for training, a percentage PROTECTING THE PEOPLE
for attrition, testing, and so on, and the requirement came Ryan had more on his plate than combat rotations and
out to 381. deployments. The situation in the former Yugoslavia was still
The AEFs did not exist in a vacuum. The National Defense troubling, and the Air Force was on continuous duty there, as
Strategy required a force able to fight two major regional contin- well as in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the military was facing
gencies at approximately the same time. The Navy drew the line other problems.
at 11 carrier battle groups “and anyone who ever questioned The Clinton administration had capped military pay growth
that, they’d say, ‘No, we have to have 11 carrier battle groups,’ below wage inflation in 1993. By 1997, the caps had opened
up a 9 percent gap between military and civilian pay, accord- to let people buy in than to force change. In the end, it was Ry-
ing to RAND Corp. estimates at the time. This came on top of an’s successor, Jumper, who made it the Air Force’s official logo.
an estimated 12 percent gap that had grown since the 1980s. But by then it was already widely recognized and accepted.
RAND and others questioned whether that gap really applied Not taking credit and letting things percolate is also reflected
to the full force, or only to certain service members, but there in Ryan’s approach to Corona meetings. All Chiefs have expe-
was no escaping that military pay had fallen behind—and that rience in Coronas before they are running them. When they
recruiting and retention were beginning to demonstrate that finally are in charge, they have a very good idea of what they
fact. Another change Congress made in the 1980s was also think is going to work. “First thing is: You’re not the smartest
coming into focus. Lawmakers had changed the formula for person in the room, and if you think you are, you’re not going
military retirement in 1987, but many in the military did not to learn anything.”
begin to recognize the difference until the late 1990s. “Make sure you include everybody’s opinion, and listen
“Recruitment and retention were a big issue when I came to them because someone in there has got a better idea than
on board,” Ryan said. “We had never advertised before that.” you do—or can take your idea and make it even better,” Ryan
Pilot retention was also a problem. “During the drawdown said. “When you go into executive session at Corona, that’s an
we had made a huge mistake: We had tried to throttle up and important meeting. People can say what they need to say and
down the number of pilots that we would put out in a year. give their honest opinions without fear of being chastised. I
… But we had no way of predicting the run on our force that had some wonderful, cooperative four-stars that were my guys.
came from the airlines. Or how much our young force would They helped me a lot. … I didn’t have a maverick in the group
decide after X amount of time they wanted out. Or what kind in the sense of a guy who was fighting where we wanted to go.
of payback we’d get from any of our” incentive programs. “But And we had some that had a lot of opinions and a few that
never pull it back,” Ryan said. “Because when you pull it back, had a bit of an ego, but everyone of them in the end were on
you lose the instructor pilots, you lose range capability, you the team. Everyone of them was an Airman. A team player.”
lose airplanes.” Ryan had a lot to live up to as the second Ryan to become Air
But then, Ryan added a wrinkle. Those who agreed to let Force Chief. His father had been a highly decorated bomber
the Air Force train them to be pilots also agreed to stay in the pilot in World War II, with two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart
service for 10 years. “My personnel guys said, ‘No—we can’t for being wounded on an antiaircraft fire on a bomber mis-
do that!’ But I said, ‘Yes, 10 years, you go to pilot training, you sion. “He was a hero in my eyes, not just because he was my
give us 10 years back.’” dad, but because of his background. He took me up in a B-26
The increased commitment had no impact on the take rate, when I was about 10 years old, and he was a commander at
Ryan said. But 15 years later, the Air Force is still struggling to Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. And from then on, I wanted
retain enough mid-career pilots. Why? “That goes back to that to fly airplanes.”
stability issue,” Ryan said. “If the family is unhappy because The elder Ryan impressed his son with his “ethical quality
they don’t have that stability, then it’s very hard to keep the that was unquestionable ... and I vowed that I would try and
member.” live up to that too. Integrity ought to be your watchword, be-
Having tried advertising for new recruits, Ryan was now cause if you don’t have integrity, you have nothing. You’ve got
interested in leveraging that kind of marketing power for re- to admit when you’re wrong, and you’ve got to stand up and
tention. “I looked around and I said, ‘We don’t have a rallying say so when something is your fault.”
symbol in the Air Force, we don’t have a symbol.’ I mean, the When Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady was shot down in
Marines have their eagle, globe, and anchor, and the Army has Bosnia, Ryan said, it was his fault. “I put them in a position
their star, and the Navy’s got a lot of anchors. Well, we don’t where they were vulnerable,” he said. “So Scott got shot down
have anything.” because of me.”
Ryan hired some “Fifth Avenue guys” from New York and A few years later, another Airman was shot down, this time
took their renderings to a Corona meeting of the Air Force’s in Serbia. The pilot, then-Lt. Col. David L. Goldfein, had been
four-star leadership. “There was one that stood out above the an aide to Ryan earlier in his career, and Goldfein’s brother Col.
others,” Ryan said. “And that’s the one we have today.” But it Stephen Goldfein was Ryan’s aide at the time. Ryan said the day
wasn’t really that simple. He launched the symbol in a guerilla “Fingers” Goldfein was shot down was his worst day as Chief.
marketing campaign, using it as an unofficial logo in Air Force When he finally got word that Goldfein had been rescued,
ads and waiting to see if it caught on organically. “I said go he called Stephen. “I’ve got some good news and some bad
put it on a couple of water towers, put in on the front gate in a news,” Ryan told his executive aide. “The good news is we got
couple of places, but don’t force it. ... And it caught on big time.” your brother back. The bad news is the Goldfein family owes
Ryan said on issues of style, rather than substance, it’s better the Air Force one F-16.” J
Gen. David L. Goldfein, CSAF No. 21 (2016-2020)
The ‘Joint’ Chief
B
y September 2015, everyone knew that year’s “AFA”— about two ground-breaking options for his relief: Gen. Lori
the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space & J. Robinson, then commander of Pacific Air Forces, and Gen.
Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.—would Darren W. McDew, who had only recently taken charge of
be Gen. Mark A. Welsh III’s last as Air Force Chief U.S. Transportation Command. Absent from that conjecture:
of Staff. He’d been in the job since 2012, and his Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein.
four-year tour would be up the following summer. Junior to both Robinson and McDew, Goldfein had sur-
On the eve of the conference, news outlets speculated vived a missile strike that downed his F-16 over Serbia, leaving
him stranded in hostile territory until
he could be rescued. “Intercepting an
enemy missile with my airplane was not
my best mission,” he said. Surviving and
then thriving as his career advanced
belied the notion that the Air Force
suffered from a zero-defect mentality. In
the wake of losing his airplane, Goldfein
had not only survived, but thrived.
“Beginning as a young captain in
Desert Storm, I had not missed a single
fight in my career,” Goldfein said. That
included two years as the Air and Space
Senior Airman Jeff Parkinson

Component Commander for Central
Command from 2011 to 2013. Even so,
Goldfein didn’t see himself as a serious
candidate for Chief until Welsh let him
know he was a serious contender, a
wake-up call that forced him to start
thinking seriously about how he would
approach the role if he was indeed the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein interacted with Air Force Special Operations
choice. Command personnel at Hurlburt Field, Fla., in October 2016. Goldfein was the keynote
“That was really when I started think- speaker at a Special Tactics Memorial dedication ceremony.
ing seriously about, OK, what are my
gifts?” he said. “I think every leader brings certain gifts other services that his concept joint command and control
and strengths to the table and certainly an equal number concepts not only made sense but were critical—that will
of weaknesses. So what are my strengths? And as I thought likely be his long-term legacy. “When we started the con-
about it, it became clear to me that what I knew, perhaps as versation, it was a question of whether we really needed to
well as anybody else in the Air Force, was the business of do this,” Goldfein said. “What took four years was building
joint warfighting.” trust amongst the services that this wasn't the money grab.”
Goldfein had flown in every Air Force combat operation The challenge was that all the services were already operat-
since Desert Storm and in the prior seven years had stepped ing in multiple domains. “Think about it: If you’re the Chief of
through a series of preparatory jobs: Deputy Director of Pro- Naval Operations, you’ve invested billions in command and
grams on the Air Staff, Director of Operations at Air Combat control to connect what you believe is an all-domain force that
Command, Commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, operates from subsurface submarines to the surface and to
and Director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. Now he awoke the air. So you’re already a multi-domain force, and you build
to a possibility he hadn’t really seen coming. C2 to connect your forces at sea. If you’re the Chief of Staff of
Once selected, Goldfein went to Welsh with a plea: “I need the Army, you’ve invested billions of dollars to connect your
some time with a small transition team to really put some seri- Soldiers, and you’re transitioning your Army into the digital
ous thought into where I want to focus so I can hit the ground world. And along comes this Air Force guy that says, ‘Hey, I’ve
running on Day One,” Goldfein said. “You know, that’s tough got an idea: Scrap all those investments you’ve made and let
conversation. What I was really asking him was, ‘Hey, Chief, me come in and solve this for the world.’ That is a nonstarter.”
I want you to work like a dog until the end without a Vice.’” Goldfein knew the Air Force had expertise the other ser-
Welsh agreed, cutting Goldfein loose with a small team to vices could leverage. Going back to 1947, Congress had iden-
develop his plan. That team included then-Brig. Gen. Alexus tified command and control as an initial Air Force mission.
G. “Grinch” Grynkewich (now the three-star commander of “But if we were to approach it so that it could be interpreted
9th Air Force and the Combined Forces Air Component Com- as a money grab, it would be dead on arrival,” Goldfein said.
mander at U.S. Central Command). He wanted focus—“big, He spent the next four years “squinting with his ears,” he
audacious, and achievable” ideas to shape the coming four said, listening and learning about the challenges each service
years. chief saw in his particular domain. The Army chiefs saw the
“Where I focused was joint warfighting excellence: How issue as one of scale and speed. While the Air Force sought
do I take the service from where it is to a point where I can to connect a few thousand airplanes, the Army needed to
hand it off as a more capable joint teammate?” he said. For connect a million Soldiers; and as USAF tried to operate at
the next four years, everything he could control—and there the speed of sound, the Army needed to keep up only with
were, of course, plenty of issues he could not control—had the speed of traffic.
to “make us better joint warfighters.” “We had to educate ourselves,” Goldfein said. “If we’re
Three areas would get his particular focus: First, reinvig- going to offer solutions to the Army, we better understand
orating the fighting formation of the Air Force, in particular ground maneuver. If we’re going to offer solutions to the
empowering squadron leaders; second, joint development; world’s greatest Navy, we better understand submarine
and third, digitizing and connecting joint warfighters, a con- operations.”
cept that became multi-domain command and control, and Slowly the multi-domain phrase caught on. The Army and
then, as he was reaching the end of his tour, joint all-domain Navy began to adopt the language. The question had changed.
command and control (JADC2). Instead of ‘Why do we do this?’ Goldfein said, it was, “How
Of the three, it is the third one—helping to convince the do we get after this as a team?”
386 that yes, he could cut the Corps to 159,000—but then pivoting
Not everything went so well. Goldfein inherited a force in to say that to meet the nation's security requirements, 174,000
decline, one too small to meet its many requirements. The Marines was the number needed. Mundy repeated his case at
nuclear force was decrepit, he had a new tanker that wasn’t every opportunity for a year and ultimately won the argument.
performing, his fighter force was aging out faster than he Could Goldfein not have followed that model to achieve
could acquire replacements. When Congress asked for an ob- his needed 386 squadrons?
jective assessment to define the Air Force the nation needed, “The big difference between us and the Marine Corps [in
Goldfein and then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson 1992] was that the Commandant already had 174,000 Ma-
responded with a clear flight plan: 386 operational squadrons, rines,” Goldfein said. The two services were approaching a
a 20 percent increase over the existing force. similar value statement, but from opposing directions.
The plan was laid out at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Confer- The Marines were drawing down from a force greater than
ence in 2018, halfway through Goldfein’s tenure, and the Air 200,000 and hoped to be spared the deep cut to 159,000; by
Force celebrated by giving the press and others coffee mugs contrast, Goldfein’s force was already undersized. Rather
emblazoned with the number 386. “There was classified than seeking to foreshorten a drawdown, he would have been
assessment and intelligence analysis that went into this,” asking for a budget increase measured in the tens of billions.
Goldfein said. “This was 386 squadrons that directly aligned That was beyond imagination.
with the national security and national defense strategy and Still, “386 was a helpful metric for me because I could
combatant commander demand, given classified operational then articulate where I thought we were risk-wise, in various
war plans.” scenarios, whether in the tank or at the White House,” Gold-
Some greeted the disclosure of this plan as the beginning fein said. With that, he said, he could “now articulate what I
of a new campaign to grow the Air Force. Goldfein did not. thought was the amount of risk was, and I could do it with a
“We did all the analysis, and you could back it up with data lot greater granularity, based on where we were versus where
to say you could meet the need at moderate risk with 386. the moderate risk level was. It was a very helpful benchmark
Anything below that, you just increased risk. So now, do we in some of those discussions.”
keep banging the drum and say 386, when we’re actually at Goldfein saw risk every place he turned. But he also saw
320? That didn’t make much sense.” opportunities, seizing them—at some cost.
Goldfein saw the analysis as a worthwhile, but academic When the Air Force took a cut to help fund fourth-gener-
exercise, because he couldn’t imagine that Congress would ation Navy F/A-18 purchases, he later got a chance to claw
fund 66 more squadrons and all the people, weapons, and some of that back. But Defense Department leadership were
support that would require. offering a choice. He could have the money to fund new-build
A generation before, at the end of the Cold War, then-Chair- F-15s, built in the same Boeing Co. plant in St. Louis where the
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell presented F/A-18s were made, but not for additional Lockheed F-35s.
his Base Force, the blueprint for a scaled down, peacetime U.S. “My first response was, ‘I’m not going to spend a penny
military in a unipolar world. All of the services would be cut of fifth-generation money against a fourth-generation asset.
deeply, and all of the services accepted their fate. Whatever That’s a red line,’” Goldfein recalled. “And then I said, second,
pushback occurred, only the Marine Corps managed to take that ‘there can be no trading of aircraft, because where we
their fight public, resisting the call to shrink the Corps to just are headed is fifth- and sixth-generation. But I do have a
159,000 Marines. Then-Commandant Gen. Carl Mundy, a capacity challenge, and I can’t allow the Air Force to lose $7
buzz-cut, square-jawed Marine straight from central casting, billion in assets.’”
launched a sort of insurgency, telling every audience possible Goldfein took the deal, accepting a future that would in-
Gen. David Goldfein

focused on revitalizing
squadrons during his
tenure as Chief, visiting
the 16th Electronic
Warfare Squadron in
June 2018 at Eglin Air
Force Base, Fla. Four
months later, the base
was almost destroyed
by a hurricane.
Samuel King Jr./USAF

clude dozens—and possibly up to 200—new-build F-15EX tary branch focused on space was underway. Goldfein was
fighters. If it was the will of the Department of Defense and opposed at the start. He saw a seamlessness in the integration
the Congress that the Air Force purchase F-15s, Goldfein said, of air and space within his force, and “I was worried that in
“then we’re going to look at these airplanes and we’re going go the business of separating the services, we would separate
take a look at the fleet, and then determine the best option.” that jointness,” he said. “I was worried about us, you know,
What the Air Force found, he said, was that the Pacific’s losing some of our edge and the integration of air and space.”
long ranges made the new-build F-15EXs attractive be- He imagined turf wars ahead, because he’d been around
cause—as good as the F-35 is—it can’t match the F-15 for the Pentagon to know well enough that when something is
range and payload. “In a Pacific scenario, when we played new, “First thing you build is a castle, then you dig a moat,
various force elements together, the combination” proved and then you fill it with dragons. Because you’ve got to protect
attractive, he said. your resources,” he acknowledged. But then Goldfein went
New advances promised by the F-15EX also helped change to Maxwell Air Force Base and Air University. He met with
his perception. “Stealth is not the only spectrum,” he said. a group of Schriever Fellows, “our smartest space officers.”
“Radar is not the only spectrum where you have to hide. And Goldfein was trying to sell them on his operational inte-
so the more we looked at the options, the better the F-15EX gration concept. “I was watching their body language, and
looked from a joint warfighting could see: They ain’t buying it,”
perspective.” he admitted. “So I finally just
“The Air Force Chief [is] the only Chief of a service that's a garage
Now Goldfein’s focus on startup. ... you know, Orville and Wilbur, bicycle mechanics, tinkering stopped, and did what Chiefs
jointness came into play. “I was in a garage? And, of course, the rest is history. I was the Chief of a ser- really ought to do, which is to
confident I was making the Air vice that has a very technical edge to it. And today, we're a hardware listen.”
Force a better joint warfighter company, but the future is in software. And we, as a service, need to By the time the conversa-
and joint warfighting service by be the thought leaders for the Department of Defense, on how we tion was over, Goldfein said, “I
entering the F-15EX,” he said. apply the military instrument of power in a digital age. ... This goes to was convinced. I said, ‘Show of
He also had a problem. The the essence of what it is to be an Airman: An Airman is an innovator. hands: How many of you think
first was that he was breaking a The nation has always looked to its Air Force, pushing the edges of we need a separate service for
line held by every Chief before technology. ... We don't think outside the box, we try to throw away space?’ Every hand went up.
the box, we try to look for completely new ways of using existing
him for nearly two decades, You know, when you’re the
technology and applying new technology. That, to me, is the essence
that the Air Force should not of an Airman. It's what we do for the nation.” Chief and your Airmen are tell-
“buy new old airplanes.” Sec- ing you something, you better
ond, the real skinny on why this made sense couldn’t be listen.” Goldfein set out to learn more. I visited every space
shared in the open. The real advantages could only be shared base, I went and I read, I listened, I watched, I spoke to in-
in classified settings, Goldfein said, meaning Goldfein strug- dustry leaders, I went to NASA.
gled to tell that story publicly, while generally holding his “I had two fundamental questions I was asking myself:
own in private. Can we as a service culturally embrace space superiority
Goldfein’s tenure included four wildcards. The first, was with the same passion that we historically have embraced
his nomination to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As air superiority? And, who can move space for the nation
Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford’s term as Chairman neared its faster in the business of joint warfighting?—Me, as a service
end, Goldfein seemed the hands-on favorite to succeed him. Chief that does leaflets to nukes and everything in between,
Having positioned himself as a joint warfighting advocate, and operates in all the domains? Or a service Chief that is
focused on projects and programs that made the joint team singularly focused on advancing space for the nation?”—In
stronger, he was a natural. No Airman had been Chairman the end, he said, “I came to my own personal conclusion that
since Gen. Richard B. Myers from 2001 to 2005, and in the the President got this one right.”
15 years since, the position had been held by two Soldiers, There were still risk, he thought. If the Air Force and Space
two Marines, and one Navy Admiral. Force got this right, the two would co-exist as close and
Goldfein had the endorsement of Defense Secretary effective partners, independent masters of their individual
James Mattis, himself a retired Marine general. But by then, domains, yet at the same time interdependent on each other
[President Donald J. ]Trump was feuding openly with Mattis, and tightly integrated to maximize their joint effect.
questioning his loyalty and challenging his independence. He took to sharing a photograph of himself holding his two
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, a burly New En- granddaughters, each two years old at the time. “I said, ‘Hey,
glander, was less joint in focus but held some special appeal meet my granddaughters, Eva and Rae. They don’t know this,
to the President. Whether it was his Princeton pedigree, his but they are members of the Class of 2040 at the Air Force
New England roots, his substantial presence, or merely the Academy. And one of them—I’ll let them choose—will join
fact that he wasn’t Mattis’ choice is unclear. But Trump nixed the Air Force and one will join the Space Force. And when
Goldfein for Milley, regardless. Goldfein has no regrets. they walk across that stage in 2040, the class of 2020 will be
“I’ve never looked back for a second on the decision to graded.”
make Mark Milley the Chairman,” he said. “Hey, he’s a friend. The test, would be what the two services had forged over
He’s a great officer, we served together as Chiefs, we served the prior 20 years. “Did we build two services that were
together in Afghanistan when he was there, and I was the focused and built on a foundation of trust and confidence
CFACC.” The President interviewed both—chose one. “He in each other, able to work as a joint team for air and space
chose the individual he had really good chemistry with. ... operations, as both supported and supporting command-
It’s not personal. It’s professional.” ers?” he asked “Or did we build castles, moats, and dragons?”
Goldfein bet his tenure on tearing down castles, slaying
SPACE WARS dragons, and breaching moats. He sees just one good option
This was 2019, debate about forming a stand-alone mili- for the future. Slay the dragons—or fail. J
Lockheed Martin illustration
An artist illustration depicts a Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) system in GEO orbit.
Next-Gen OPIR is intended to replace the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS), beginning with its first launch in 2025.
Enhanced Space-Based
Missile Tracking
America needs a more resilient missile warning system.
By Christopher Stone
A
to cue countermeasures. For that reason, detecting
and tracking nuclear strikes on the United States has
merica’s Space Based Infrared System been a primary requirement for DOD’s space-based
(SBIRS) is the most advanced ballistic missile warning systems since the Soviet Union first
missile warning capability in the world. developed nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic
Looking forward, however, SBIRS alone will missiles (ICBMs) in the 1950s. At that time, the
not provide adequate warning of missile United States developed a network of space-based
attacks by peer adversaries on the United States and infrared (IR) and terrestrial long-range sensors to
its forward deployed military forces. Both China and provide early warning. The first architecture, called
Russia are fielding a new generation of hypersonic, the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS), was a
low-flying missiles that U.S. ground-based radars 12-satellite constellation designed to provide U.S.
Christopher Stone
are unable to track in the time needed to provide leaders with enough advanced notice of a Soviet
is senior Fellow for
warning and cue defenses. They are also fielding ICBM attack to direct a response before DOD’s nu-
Space Studies at
anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons to degrade or destroy clear forces could be destroyed.
the Mitchell Insti-
existing U.S. space-based missile warning sensors. A more advanced follow-on system called the
tute Spacepower
Current U.S. systems lack sufficient defenses against Defense Support Program (DSP) operated in various
Advantage Center of
these threats and are locked into predictable orbital configurations from the 1970s until the early 2000s
Excellence. Download
regimes that leave them vulnerable. These capabili- the entire report at
when it was subsumed into the larger SBIRS program.
ties, and America’s relative vulnerabilities, give China http:// DSP systems were deployed into GEO orbits with
and Russia a decisive advantage in a major conflict MitchellAerospacePow- supplementary sensors operating in Highly Elliptical
with the United States. er.org. Orbit (HEO) to provide uninterrupted global early
In order to defeat large-scale missile attacks, you warning coverage of ballistic missile strikes. An ene-
have to “see” them first, then provide warning in time my-launched ballistic missile’s rocket would emit IR
energy that entered the opening in the satellite's IR sunshade, MISSILE TRACKING CHALLENGES
passed through a corrector lens, traveled past the photoelectric The current U.S. space-based missile warning architec-
cell detector array, reflected off a mirror, and then focused onto ture was optimized to detect traditional ballistic missile
the detector array. Fourth generation DSP satellites increased launches that followed relatively predictable flight paths
the number of infrared cells each satellite carried from 2,000 and could be detected and tracked early enough to cue
to 6,000, which further enhanced their ability to discriminate defensive systems. Both China and Russia recognized the
between separate launch events. limitations of these warning systems and deliberately de-
As ballistic missile technologies began to proliferate globally veloped long-range missiles to evade detection by SBIRS
during the latter part of the Cold War, DOD adapted its missile and other warning sensors.
warning systems to detect and track shorter-range “theater” These new weapons range from low-flying supersonic cruise
ballistic missiles, as well. This development followed DSP missiles to Mach 5-plus hypersonic missiles that fly depressed
successfully detecting several Iraqi short-range SCUD theater trajectories in the atmosphere and maneuver.
ballistic missile launches during the 1991 Gulf War. DOD Hypersonic weapons can be launched from airborne aircraft,
developed SBIRS to detect shorter-range, non-maneuvering ships at sea, and land-based mobile launchers. Long-range
ballistic missile launches and increase the accuracy of the air-launched hypersonic missiles with scramjet engines could
missiles’ predicted impact points. By the mid-1990s, the U.S. also be launched by an enemy’s bombers from under the cover
space-based missile warning architecture had expanded from of air defenses in their own airspace. Such weapons could be
nuclear deterrence and defense to also providing warning of deployed as part of a fractional orbital bombardment system.
theater ballistic missile attacks. The variety of launch options means hypersonic weapons might
SBIRS, consists of five dedicated satellites operating in not create an IR signature intense enough to be detected by
geosynchronous Earth orbit and sensors carried by two host current U.S. sensors.
satellites in highly elliptical orbit. A SBIRS GEO spacecraft con- Long-range ballistic missiles typically have flight trajectories
sists of a bus with a radiation-hardened shell and five separate that take them over 300 km into space before they reenter the
mission downlinks that enhance their survivability and endur- atmosphere. The highly predictable flight paths and high alti-
ability. SBIRS remains an important capability, as the theater tudes of non-maneuvering ballistic missiles make them much
ballistic missile threat has only grown. In fact, even with SBIRS, easier to detect and track. In contrast, hypersonic missiles can
the massive January 2020 Iranian strike into northern Iraq still fly as little as 30 to 50 km above the Earth’s surface or even lower,
sent U.S. troops in the area “rushing for shelter.” which means that, because of the curvature of the earth, they
SBIRS satellites in GEO and HEO can scan the entire surface may be below areas that are effectively covered by today’s radar
of the Earth to detect the IR signatures of missiles in their boost warning architecture.
phase of flight after launch—except over the Antarctic region. Cruise missiles also have low IR signatures that cannot be
Unlike previous architectures, SBIRS can continuously scan detected by current overhead systems. Moreover, both cruise
and provide early warning while simultaneously dwelling over missiles and hypersonic weapons can maneuver to create
theater areas of interest. However, SBIRS was never designed unpredictable flight paths. Very-low-flying weapons can also
to continuously track ballistic, non-ballistic, maneuvering, and "hide" in the curvature of the Earth to avoid detection by surface
very-low-altitude hypersonic warheads after separation from radars. A combination of low-altitude flight and high speeds
their launch boosters. While GEO and HEO are great for achiev- limits the time available to detect incoming missile threats,
ing global sensor coverage, they are not ideal for systems that predict their impact points, cue defensive systems, and launch
must also provide continuous, hi-fidelity tracking of low-flying, countermeasures. Today, most of China's and Russia’s deployed
maneuverable warheads, which do not produce as intense of long-range missiles can carry one or more weapons that can
an IR signature as their launching booster. maneuver in space, in the atmosphere, or both.
Ground-Based Radar Detection of Ballistic vs Hypersonic Glide Weapons

Current missile warning radars are designed to monitor for ballistic flight paths. China and Russia's new hypersonic weapons are designed to defeat such
radars by flying low and undetected until its too late.
iss
listic M ile Traject
Bal ory
Detected Lim
by Radar it o
De f Gro
tec un
tio d-B
n A as
t L ed
arg Ra
e dar
Detected
lider Trajectory by Radar
km Hypersonic G
-100
re
phe
s
mo Launch Site Target
At Not to scale

Ballistic Missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicles
Payload Post-Boost Propulsive Burns Place Each
Re-entry Vehicle (RV) On Different
Independently Targeted Ballistic Trajectories
Ballistic
Flight
Boost
Phase Ballistic
Post-Boost Phase Flight
Altitude
ge
Ran
s RV Impact
ros
C
Launch Down Range Booster Final RV Impact
Stage Impact
Boost
Notional. Not to scale Post-Boost RV Impact
There are now five basic categories of threats a future U.S. Examples include the medium-range DF-21D “carrier killer”
missile warning architecture must be capable of tracking: anti-ship missile, which China has operationally deployed since
1. Traditional long-range ballistic missiles with no post-boost 2010. The DF-21D has a ballistic missile booster with a payload
payload maneuverability. that separates and maneuvers to a designated target. The mis-
2. Missiles on ballistic trajectories with the ability to perform sile system has a dual anti-ship and land-attack role; its design
very small, exo-atmospheric trajectory corrections via multiple includes a post-boost propulsion system and flight surfaces that
large propulsive burns that deploy multiple independently give its warhead the ability to change targets or modify its flight
targetable (MIRV) warheads on independent trajectories with path to correct for moving targets—like ships at sea.
impact points several kilometers apart. ■ Cruise missiles. Finally, cruise missiles are weapons that
3. Missile systems with post-boost weapons, flying ballistic combine aerodynamic control surfaces and jet propulsion
trajectories capable of very small maneuvers during the termi- engines to extend their ranges or atmospheric flight times.
nal portions of the trajectory inside the atmosphere, known as Cruise missiles can be highly maneuverable, which can in-
maneuvering re-entry vehicles (MaRVs). crease the number of directions from which a cruise missile
4. Boost-glide missiles that fly non-ballistic, depressed tra- can attack a target.
jectories at hypersonic speeds in the upper atmosphere that
can maneuver enroute to their target and in the terminal phase. ANTI-SATELLITE THREATS
5. Missiles that can sustain long-range flight in the atmo- Both China and Russia now consider U.S. space-based assets
sphere and maneuver after launch, such as cruise missiles. as high-value targets that can be threatened to coerce the United
■ Ballistic missiles with limited exo-atmospheric post- States in a crisis or attacked to achieve space superiority in a
boost weapons maneuverability. One type of maneuvering conflict. They have developed kinetic ASATs and other space
weapon has payload-carrying vehicles equipped with post-boost weapons to hold these “difficult to defend, easy to attack”
propulsion system engines that can deploy multiple warheads targets at risk. These capabilities could give China and Russia
on independent trajectories while above the atmosphere. ICBMs the means to negate much of DOD’s current ability to detect
with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicles large-scale missile attacks, track them, and relay fire control
(MIRVs) are one example of this type of weapon. A MIRV ballistic information to U.S. air and missile defenses. This could give
missile carries multiple reentry vehicles on top of its main rocket China or Russia a decisive advantage in a major conflict with
booster. Some of these reentry vehicles could be configured as the United States. These realities point to the need to ensure
unarmed decoys to complicate an opponent’s missile defense that DOD’s future missile warning architecture and other space
operations. Discriminating between “live” weaponized reentry systems are designed and deployed in modes that will help them
vehicles and decoys can be a major challenge. survive and operate in this contested environment.
■ Missiles with warheads capable of minor post-boost, China has developed and deployed what it refers to as a
aerodynamic maneuvers in the atmosphere. These weapons “multi-layered attack architecture” with weapons systems that
are another type of maneuvering threat with external control span the counterspace threat continuum. Used in combination,
surfaces that can be moved to direct a warhead to its target with these weapons can degrade, deny, or destroy U.S. space systems
greater accuracy than weapons that can only fly gravity assisted, in all orbital regimes.
spin stabilized ballistic flight paths. Maneuverable Reentry On the non-kinetic side of this threat continuum, China has
Vehicles (MaRVs) are aerodynamically capable weapons that operational ground-based jamming systems that are capable of
can alter their flight paths within the atmosphere to establish disrupting satellite communications, GPS navigation signals,
glide profiles that can extend their range. Hypersonic Boost- synthetic aperture radars, missile warning, and other satellite
Glide Vehicles (HGVs) can also aerodynamically maneuver, systems. Jamming can prevent users from using satellite com-
but they have the capability to glide at hypersonic speeds for munication networks, degrade or prevent transmissions of vital
most of their flight in the atmosphere after booster separation. missile warning data from space-based sensors to warfighters,
■ Missile systems that combine both post-boost propulsion and disrupt uplinks and downlinks needed to command and
and aerodynamic surfaces. These attributes further extend the control spacecraft.
range and maneuverability of a warhead’s flight to its target. On the kinetic side of the threat continuum, Chinese forces
have deployed ground-launched ASAT missiles that can attack to get after both the emerging class of missiles and the threat
assets in LEO. China has also demonstrated capabilities to that currently exists in space.”
reach targets in MEO and GEO, as well as its ability to maneu-
ver co-orbital anti-satellite spacecraft close to high-value U.S. PROLIFERATED-LEO TRACKING LAYER
space systems. The Space Development Agency’s (SDA) National Defense
Like China, Russia views space as a warfighting domain, Space Architecture Tracking Layer now in development is
and they base their warfighting doctrine around the idea that intended to increase DOD’s ability to receive timely warning
achieving space supremacy is a precondition for winning a of attacks by hypersonic weapons and other emerging missile
conflict with the United States. Consistent with these beliefs, threats. SDA’s design evolves over time. Tranche 1 will initially
Russia has committed to developing space capabilities to deter consist of 28 tracking vehicles with IR sensors to detect and
the United States and its allies and to attack their space assets track missiles; over 100 transport layer vehicles to “provide
in the event of war. assured, resilient, low-latency military data and connectivity
Russia has fielded a suite of non-kinetic options to create worldwide to the full range of warfighter platforms”; and other
reversible effects on satellite systems in space, including orbiting satellites. These Tranche 1 vehicles will orbit at an
ground-based systems to counter GPS navigation signals, altitude of approximately 1,000 km above the Earth—in Low
tactical communications, satellite communications, and ra- Earth Orbit—with an inclination between 80 and 100 degrees.
dars. Reportedly, Russia is also developing an airborne laser One advantage of a proliferated LEO constellation force design
platform to use against space-based missile warning sensors. is the added operational resilience that its hundreds of satellites
Perhaps most importantly, Russia has demonstrated several create. Over time, SDA will “expand its global coverage and
ASAT missiles that could become operational within the next chain of custody of various missile threats.”
few years that can destroy targets in LEO. In late 2021, Russia An important SDA goal is to fully integrate information from
demonstrated this capability in a live-fire, hit-to-kill demonstra- its Tracking Layer with other space-based missile warning
tion. The Russian government also appeared unfazed by orbital capabilities to provide highly accurate fire control solutions
debris created by this demonstration, emphasizing instead that for both current and future missile defense operations. This
it had gained another means of threatening adversaries' space will be the mission of battle management, command, control,
systems in a crisis. and communications (BMC3) modules in each Tracking Layer
satellite. These modules will be designed to support key mission
DIVERSIFIED SPACE-BASED TRACKING functions such as processing data from sensors, fusing data from
There is an answer to these challenges. DOD now has the multiple satellites in the constellation into three-dimensional
technology to create a multi-orbit system of systems that can missile tracks, and managing operational tasks.
detect non-ballistic missiles from launch to their designated Proliferated LEO constellations will increase the resiliency
target areas. The most effective approach would be to develop of DOD’s future missile warning operations, but will not be
a multi-layered, space-based architecture of sensors across all enough on their own to offset growing counterspace threats.
orbital regimes—low Earth orbits (LEO), medium Earth orbits They remain vulnerable to non-kinetic threats including radio
(MEO), geosynchronous Earth orbits (GEO), and Polar orbits. frequency (RF) jamming and high power microwave (HPM)
This multi-orbit architecture must be capable of detecting mis- weapons that could affect multiple systems in LEO in very
sile launches, tracking maneuvering missiles at all altitudes, and short periods of time.
then providing fire control information directly to air and missile RF jamming includes ground-based systems capable of using
defenses in near-real-time. DOD should enhance resilience RF frequencies to block or damage communications links be-
by fielding satellites capable of enhanced maneuver to avoid tween satellites in LEO and their user ground stations. Downlink
or otherwise negate ASATs; Deploying decoys at LEO, MEO, jamming can enhance the “noise” of a satellite signal to the
and GEO to complicate an adversary’s attack; and developing extent that the signals are not useful or cannot be received by
its own kinetic and non-kinetic counterspace capabilities to ground users. Uplink jamming can likewise block or otherwise
directly defeat enemy ASAT and other counterspace threats. interfere with signals going up to the satellite from major
In fact, this is the direction the Space Force is already moving operational commands or ground sites that provide command
in, as General Jay Raymond has explained: “We are diversify- and control over the vehicle. Targets of these jamming systems
ing the architecture to reduce the threat in space to an attack are typically high-value GEO satellites or SATCOM systems.
that may occur. We pivot from handfuls of very exquisite, very HPM weapons are another emerging threat to assets operat-
expensive satellites, to an architecture that’s more diversified ing in LEO. Emitters that could be ground-based or mounted on
Maneuvering Cruise Missile Trajectories

Boost Phase
Post-Boost Phase
Altitude
ge
Ran Payload Maneuvers Aerodynamically and
s Propulsively Within the Atmosphere to Target
os
Cr
Launch Down Range Booster Final Stage Impact
Payload
Boost Impact
Notional. Not to scale Post-Boost-Sustainer-Powered Aerodynamic Flight

Field of View: Satellites in LEO, MEO, and GEO rate four times greater than SBIRS.
Data collected by Next Generation OPIR
during the initial phase of a missile attack could
cue sensors in other layers. Satellites deployed
at MEO could use these cues to begin tracking
threats as they transition to their post-boost
and mid-course phases of flight. The lower
GEO/IGSO MEO LEO altitudes of IR sensors in MEO will help increase
Earth the fidelity of missile tracks in preparation for
handing off threats to LEO layer sensors. Finally,
a mature future proliferated LEO constellation with
its hundreds of satellites will provide even higher fidelity
ships, aircraft, or even other satellites could generate pulses of tracks that give air and missile defenses on the ground, in the
HPM energy that can “disrupt a satellite’s electronics or cause air, and at sea the information they need to achieve precise fire
permanent damage to electrical circuits and processors in a control solutions.
satellite.” The “kill” mechanism of counter-electronics HPM
weapons is to create a buildup of energy in a vulnerable circuit CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
or electronic component in a satellite past its tolerance levels, DOD has the technology to develop a new space-based mis-
causing them to stop working or even burn out. sile warning and tracking architecture that is capable against
Given growth in these counterspace threats, global missile emerging threats. Countermeasures are also needed. DOD
warning coverage should include systems based in MEO and and the U.S. Space Force should consider active and passive
GEO. capabilities that would help deter attacks on the force design
and counter them should deterrence fail.
MEDIUM EARTH ORBIT BASING CONCEPT ■ DOD should adopt a multi-layered satellite architecture
MEO orbits—in the space between 2,000 km and 35,766 km that combines legacy ballistic missile warning capabilities with
(the edge of GEO) above the Earth—have been called the “sweet enhanced sensors in LEO, MEO, GEO, and Polar orbits to detect
spot” for satellite systems. and track hypersonic weapons and other novel missile threats
Satellites in MEO are closer to the Earth than GEO-based over their entire flight profiles. Multiple, complimentary layers
DSP and SBIRS satellites, which reduces the time needed to of sensors should be a threshold requirement for any future
transmit missile warning information signals to air and missile missile warning and tracking architecture that is designed to
defenses. MEO sensors provide faster and higher fidelity mis- operate and survive in future contested space environments.
sile warning information transmission compared to sensors ■ DOD should develop the capability to deploy decoy satel-
operating in more distant GEO. lites in LEO and MEO orbital regimes to complicate Chinese
Conversely, compared to LEO, sensors orbiting in MEO have and Russian counterspace targeting operations. This defensive
longer pass times over target areas and wider fields of view, measure would enhance deterrence as well as increase the re-
so they can maintain custody of missile tracks for longer. It siliency of DOD’s space-based missile warning architecture in
would require between 9 and 36 missile warning satellites in a conflict. Like late Cold War ICBMs that carried decoy reentry
MEO to achieve continuous global coverage, compared to the vehicles to complicate an enemy’s missile defense operations,
hundreds of satellites needed to achieve the same coverage for mixing decoys with active missile warning and tracking satel-
a LEO constellation. lites across all orbital regimes, but especially MEO and GEO,
MEO-based systems are vulnerable, however, to numer- will pose a targeting dilemma for China and Russia. It could
ous counterspace threats. Adversaries have demonstrated possibly even cause them to waste high-value ASAT assets on
MEO-capable ASAT systems since 2014. Chinese and Russian non-operational, low-cost decoys.
co-orbital ASATs and counterspace systems capable of oper- ■ DOD should take advantage of mature technologies that
ating across multiple orbits to attack targets are clear threats to will increase the maneuverability of satellites in MEO and GEO.
satellites in MEO. A resilient, survivable space-based missile Given the limited numbers of satellites deployed to MEO and
warning and tracking force design with onboard defensive ca- GEO, increasing their survivability by giving them the ability to
pabilities such as maneuver, decoys, or active defense weapons rapidly maneuver to avoid threats and fill gaps in a post-attack
should be based across all orbital regimes and hardened against environment will be vital. Missile warning and tracking satellites
the threats that will exist in the “rapid and destructive” dynamic in MEO and GEO basing layers should transition from using
space warfighting environment China and Russia seek to create. limited lifespan, chemically based propellants to other more
advanced propulsion capabilities to enhance their ability to
GEOSYNCHRONOUS EARTH ORBIT BASING maneuver to avoid attacks and change orbits post attack.
GEO-based satellites have the advantage of providing “per- ■ Both Chinese and Russian strategic space writings indicate
sistent stare” coverage for boost-phase ballistic missile warnings their militaries believe an effective deterrent in space must
while monitoring specific theaters for shorter-range theater include capabilities that can attack an adversary’s space in-
ballistic missile events simultaneously. frastructure in a “rapid and destructive” manner. DOD should
DOD’s objective is to create multiple fields of view over likewise rapidly and overtly field kinetic and non-kinetic ASAT
designated regions or specific target areas without the need systems in sufficient numbers to hold adversary space systems
to deploy massive constellations into GEO. Next Generation at risk to enhance deterrence and, in the event deterrence
OPIR sensors will be three times as sensitive and two times fails, achieve victory. These capabilities would not only deter
more accurate than SBIRS sensors to better detect and track the peer adversary attacks on U.S. space-based missile warning
weaker IR signatures of non-ballistic missiles such as hypersonic and tracking assets, but they would also increase options to
weapons. Next Generation OPIR will also have a downlink data respond to attacks in space. J
tary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III issued a vocal order on July
16, 2021, instructing the U.S. Air Force to deploy a personnel re-
covery task force (PRTF) to Hamid Karzai International Airport.
The PRTF’s mission was to provide combat search and rescue
in support of a U.S. noncombatant evacuation operation for
tens of thousands of Afghans who had served as interpreters,
drivers, and assistants to U.S. forces and diplomats.
The Pentagon avoided such a move for many months, con-
cerned that a mass exodus would demoralize Afghan allies. The
plan at the time was still to leave behind a large U.S. diplomatic
presence in Kabul to support the Afghan government and se-
curity forces. In July, however, Taliban insurgents intensified
an offensive that had already seen them capture more than
a third of provincial capitals around the country. A new U.S.
intelligence assessment that took note of those negative trends
warned that the Afghan government could fall within the next
six to 12 months, as opposed to the two- or three-year window
that the Intelligence Community assessed only months earlier.
That Afghan institutions might collapse in just weeks had not
yet occurred to U.S. intelligence analysts.
The day after Austin’s deployment order, the State Depart-
ment announced Operation Allies Refuge, and the Air Force was
directed to organize relocation flights for Afghan nationals and
their families eligible for U.S. Special Immigrant Visas. In the
classified briefing at the operations center for the 71st Rescue
Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., the wing commander
explained to the deploying Airmen that “the hair on the back of
Freedom Ride
your necks should be standing up: This is not the Afghanistan
we knew.”
Lt. Col. Brian Desautels was chosen to command the per-
sonnel recovery task force, which included combat search
and rescue (CSAR) units and helicopters from Moody as well
as Nellis and Davis-Monthan Air Force Bases in Arizona.
Inside the Biggest Noncombatant Along with many senior officers, Desautels had spent much
Staff Sgt. Brandon Cribelar

of his career fighting America’s longest war, but in 20 years of
Evacuation in U.S. Air Force History. operations in Afghanistan, U.S. Air Force units had become
accustomed to operating out of large, secure military bases
with abundant ground support such as Bagram and Kandahar
airfields. At HKIA in Kabul, the task force would operate out of
a facility wedged into the middle of a sprawling capital of nearly
5 million people, with no hardened base support or dedicated
Airmen assisted refugees boarding a U.S. Air Force C-17 as they departed Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 19, 2021. required to safely transport the roughly 20 percent of adult security force. The task force would thus need to carry all the
female evacuees who were pregnant. U.S. Air Forces in Europe food, water, equipment, and expertise it would require in the
By James C. Kitfield
A
2001, terrorist attacks. and the 521st Air Mobility Operations Wing created passenger coming weeks.
On this one-year anniversary, however, the fog of medical augmentation teams to attend to the needs of evacu- The deployment amounted to an unprecedented stress test
ug. 30 marks the one-year anniversary of war that enshrouded so much of Operation Allies ees who were in many cases wounded and traumatized, and of the Air Force’s agile combat employment (ACE) concept,
the end of Operation Allies Refuge (OAR), Refuge has largely lifted. Revealed beneath the chaos crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in flights of more than 450 with pressures few could imagine at the time.
the final act in the longest war in U.S. his- “The hair on and tragedy is the largest non-combatant evacuation passengers per sortie. Their efforts included multiple lifesaving “I had served in Afghanistan, so I knew what my commander
tory. Historians will long study the United the back of operation (NEO) airlift in U.S. history, one that involved resuscitations inflight. was talking about in terms of the hair standing up on the back of
States’ post-9/11 Global War on Terrorism your necks round-the-clock operations of nearly 800 military and After the suicide bombing at HKIA, three Aeromedical Evac- our necks, but we are used to operating out of austere airfields
and, in particular, the failed, two-decade effort to should be civilian aircraft from more than 30 nations. In just 17 uation missions whisked 35 patients to care, saving the lives and making the best of it,” Desautels said in an interview. He
plant sustainable seeds of democracy in Afghanistan. days, more than 500 U.S. Air Force Active, Reserve, of the critically wounded. In all, 28 Aeromedical Evacuation noted that the roughly 170 multimission-capable Airmen of
Certainly as a coda to the conflict, OAR reflected the
standing up: and National Guard aircrews and hundreds of Air missions conducted during OAR flew 177 patients to badly the task force were wheels up in three C-17 “chalks” in less
chaos, tragedy, and good-intentions-gone-awry that This is not Force ground personnel helped evacuate a stagger- needed care. One of the C-17s from the 21st Airlift Squadron than 72 hours, arriving at HKIA within 96 hours of receiving
characterized so much of the Afghan War. the Afghan- ing 124,334 people, the vast majority of them Afghan also carried the 13 fallen U.S. service members killed in the the deployment order. By mid-August the PRTF had settled
What was accomplished a year ago under the most istan we nationals. bombing home to Dover Air Force Base, Del. into a good battle rhythm, helping to evacuate on average
challenging of conditions and pressures was largely knew.” Heroism and great compassion were behind those For the one-year anniversary of Operation Allies Refuge, Air 7,500 civilians each day. “We hit the ground running with a lot
overshadowed by a horrific suicide bombing that —71st Rescue unprecedented numbers. Airmen helped deliver three & Space Forces magazine interviewed a number of the many Air of focused energy, committed to giving 100 percent until our
killed more than 170 people at Hamid Karzai Inter- babies aboard C-17s during the operation, and dozens Force participants, the better to remember their largely untold mission was complete.”
national Airport, including 13 U.S. service members; Squadron wing more were born shortly after their mothers landed stories of bravery and compassion in the face of deadly chaos. Then one morning in mid-August, Desautels entered the
an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civil- commander safely at staging bases and temporary safe havens operations center at HKIA to find that Rear Adm. Peter Vasely,
ians, including seven children; and by the dispiriting around the world. Air Force Aeromedical Evacua- ‘NOT THE AFGHANISTAN WE KNEW’ a Navy SEAL and the top U.S. commander in Kabul, was wear-
spectacle of flag-waving Taliban extremists sweeping tion teams and medics stood up “Operation Stork,” Just days after the United States military had officially furled ing his full “battle rattle” and carrying his M-4 rifle. There was
to victory in Afghanistan—20 years after the Sept. 11, gathering the specialized personnel and equipment the flag on Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan, Secre- also a new sense of urgency in the orders he barked. Taliban
Airman 1st Class
Stephen Conklin
removes stitches
from an Afghani
refugee following
Operation
Allies Refuge in
September 2021.
Staff Sgt. Andrew Schumann

forces were sweeping into Kabul, and the U.S. Embassy had were previously in charge, but rather by young U.S. Marines
yet to be fully evacuated. As Desautels entered the operations in full battle gear.
center, an Army captain saluted and requested permission to “On such a hectic day, it was quite a relief to get off the
abandon his post because they were taking so much sniper fire helicopter and be greeted by a bunch of U.S. Marines on the
from nearby rooftops. He was given reinforcements from the runway. That was calming to me,” said Lynch, who along with
PRTF team instead. his team was ushered to the medical facility at HKIA that would
Desautels worked 27 hours straight and was grabbing a cou- serve both as their workplace and home for the next two weeks.
ple of hours sleep when he awoke to the sound of explosions Luckily the medical center was fairly new, with a well-equipped
and heavy machine-gun and automatic weapons fire. Jumping and modern emergency room, two operating rooms and an
out of his rack, he grabbed two bug-eyed majors and headed intensive care unit. Most important, the HKIA medical center
for the operations center. There was screaming and multiple was a hardened facility of brick and concrete with no exterior
conversations talking over each other on the radio net. With windows. Given the proximity of high-rise buildings surround-
the Taliban entering the capital virtually unopposed, Afghan ing the airport, it was a relief for the medical team not to feel
President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and Afghan Security they had a constant target on their backs.
Forces had melted away. In one of the conversations with the Afghan physician he
“Then the Taliban opened fire on the airport, and suddenly had worked with at Bagram and the embassy, Lynch learned
word came that the whole airfield was being overrun by thou- that the man had a 12-year-old daughter who was nearly the
sands of desperate Afghan civilians,” recalled Desautels. “The same age as Lynch’s own children.
whole perimeter was collapsing around us.” “We were exchanging stories about our kids, and he told me
that his daughter wanted to be a doctor like her father when she
‘I COULDN’T HELP BUT THINK OF MY DAUGHTER’ grew up,” recalled Lynch, who knew that a whole generation
After U.S. forces abandoned Bagram Airfield in July, the of young Afghan women and girls who had grown up with un-
chief medical officer, Air Force Col. Bruce Lynch, and roughly precedented freedoms in a fledgling democracy would soon
50 members of his staff relocated to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. be subjected to the medieval patriarchy of the Taliban. “In the
As the top medical adviser for Vasely, he felt acutely the tension back of my mind, I remember thinking that the options for his
between a U.S. military command anxious to evacuate the daughter’s future would be pretty grim under Taliban rule, and
embassy and a U.S. ambassador and embassy staff determined as a father, I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter in such
to keep the faith with their allies in the Afghan government. a situation. It was a horrible thought.”
“At the embassy, it was in the back of everyone’s mind that Later Lynch learned that neither the Afghan doctor nor his
things weren’t going well for the Afghan government, and by daughter were able to escape during the evacuation.
early August when two or three major provincial capitals fell to
the Taliban, you could read the tea leaves, but we didn’t want to ‘RIGHTLY CONCERNED’
abandon our Afghan partners and exacerbate their problems When the emergency call came in mid-August, Col. Colin
by making a hasty exit,” Lynch said in an interview. Working McClaskey was on a mission in the Horn of Africa. As deputy
alongside an Afghan doctor he had met at Bagram, Lynch commander of the Air Force’s 821st Contingency Response
helped treat Afghan soldiers who were wounded defending Group out of Travis Air Force Base, Calif., he led a unit that
Kabul, and the two physicians became close. specialized in opening, operating, and, if necessary, closing
When Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, the embassy staff airfields. His team included air traffic controllers, aircraft
were finally hustled into helicopters and transported to HKIA. maintenance personnel, military police, fuel specialists, and
Given the incredible stress of the moment, Lynch was relieved logisticians. And the word came that the situation in Kabul was
to be greeted at the airport not by surly Turkish soldiers who essentially going to hell, and they were needed there yesterday.
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With the rest of his team already underway from the United and took off, with Afghan civilians clinging desperately to the
States, McClaskey took a C-130 transport from Djibouti, Africa, fuselage and wheel wells. The sight of Afghans falling as the
to Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany. There he hitched a ride C-17 gained altitude would become an iconic image of OAR,
on a C-17 transport that was ferrying U.S. Army troops to Kabul, recalling photos of U.S. helicopters pulling desperate Ameri-
part of an emergency deployment of some 6,000 U.S. Soldiers cans and South Vietnamese off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in
and Marines being rushed to HKIA to try to secure the airport. Saigon in 1975.
After refueling in Kuwait, the C-17 approached the Kabul air- Just minutes later, Desautels had to make a life-or-death
port Aug. 15. Sitting in the cockpit in the right observer seat decision. In the event that HKIA was completely overrun by not
as the aircraft circled low over HKIA, McClaskey could hardly only by Afghan civilians but potentially Taliban fighters, he had
process what he was seeing. The airport looked like a crowded promised his team he would get them out or “flush” them on
soccer stadium during a riot, with thousands upon thousands the two HC-130 aircraft designated “Fever 11” and “Fever 12.”
of people outside trying to cram through the various gates and Now that the moment had apparently arrived, Desautels also
thousands more running onto the tarmac and taxiways like understood that pulling his 170-person team, many providing
they were a football pitch. airport security, would leave a critical gap in the airport’s already
“I was talking to the aircrew and over the radio with mem- crumbling defenses.
bers of my team already on the ground at HKIA as we flew low “We had intelligence that the Taliban had liberated a nearby
over the airfield,” said McClaskey. “I don’t know that there was prison full of al Qaeda and ISIS fighters, so my team understood
anybody in that airspace that wanted to be on the ground with how critical we were to the base defense plan. So instead of
their team more than me at that moment. But as we talked flushing the team, I got permission from the CFACC [Combined
through the situation very frankly, we all agreed that putting Forces Air Component Commander] to launch the HC-130s
the aircraft down would risk both it and those people on the from the taxiways, which is risky. Word came back that ‘the
ground. In the end, we had to divert back to Al Udeid, and I can airport is not clear, take off at your own risk,’ and within seconds
tell you [as we left], my folks on the ground were rightly very Fever 11 and 12 were airborne flying just 30 feet or so above the
concerned about their physical security.” heads of the crowd on the runway.”
With the aid of air refueling tankers, the increasingly ex-
‘WE’RE STAYING’ hausted pilots of the HC-130s circled overhead for more than
“Everyone just calm the ___ down! We’re launching the iron, 13 hours, waiting to see if the U.S. military could regain control
but we’re not flushing the whole team! We’re staying,” Desautels of the airfield. The alternative was to attempt an emergency
shouted into the radio in the operations center, referring to the extraction of the personnel recovery task force from a contested
two HC-130 aircraft that were designated to fly his team to safety airfield.
in the event of an emergency exfiltration. With the perimeter
breached and thousands of Afghan civilians swarming the tar- ‘A GUT PUNCH TO EVERYONE’
mac, the situation at HKIA was deteriorating by the second, and Late in the afternoon Aug. 26, Lynch stepped out of the
many people in the operation center and around the world via medical facility at HKIA for a breath of fresh air. The scene that
television footage were unnerved by what they were witnessing. greeted him outside was almost post-Apocalyptic. The shells of
A C-17 Globemaster that had just landed at the airport to abandoned cars were scattered about, and piles of discarded
deliver a load of equipment and security forces were swarmed suitcases, bags, mattresses, and the other detritus of lives torn
by hundreds of Afghan civilians before it could even offload its asunder littered the area. A stench escaped from a nearby line
cargo. Faced with possibility of losing control of their aircraft of latrines that had not been emptied in days.
and jeopardizing all those onboard, the pilots quickly taxied Due to intelligence indicating a possible suicide-bombing
Desperate to
flee the Taliban,
thousands of
Afghanis stormed
the airport,
breaching security
and forcing this
C-17 to return to
the air without
unloading its
cargo or taking
on passengers.
Some tried to cling
to the aircraft as
it lifted off, with
predictably tragic
results.
Image from Al Jazeera video

Casualties
evacuated from
Afghanistan arrived
at Landstuhl
Regional Medical
Center in Germany
on Aug. 26. The
evacuation of Kabul
flooded hospitals
with sick and
wounded civilians.
Marcy Sanchez/ Landstuhl Regional Medical Center

attack on the airport, leadership had put the small hospital on By early morning, the last of the Aeromedical Evacuation
lockdown for much of the day. Most of the doctors and nurses flights transporting the wounded to Landstuhl Regional Med-
were sleeping at the facility after their shifts anyway, so they ical Center in Germany lifted off. An exhausted Lynch looked
really had no place else to go. Then around 6 p.m., word came around a hospital very much the worse for wear. He knew the
that there had been a suicide bombing across the airport at team would have to find the energy to clean up and reset the
Abbey Gate, which U.S. Marines guarded against a swirling mass facility in case the airfield was attacked again. After all, they
of as many as 10,000 Afghan civilians desperately hoping to be were still in the middle of Kabul; the base was still surrounded
rescued. The mass of humanity provided an inviting target for by the Taliban; and other Islamic State-Khorasan terrorists were
the Islamic State-Khorasan terrorist who had packed his suicide undoubtedly still out there plotting massacres.
vest with ball bearings for maximum lethality. Soon, medical corpsmen started showing up with blood
Lynch immediately activated the mass casualty plan his donations, and Marines arrived to help clean the hospital,
team had rehearsed many times. Yet no amount of planning mopping floors, taking out the trash, and disposing of bloody
could prepare them for the arrival of the first trucks carrying bandages and sheets. That allowed Lynch and his team to get a
the wounded. little rest, but not much. Lynch knew that every day until their
“When the first truck pulled up and we saw all of the Marines scheduled departure Aug. 31 would be more dangerous than
injured in the back, that was a game-changer. That was a big the previous one.
shock to me personally and a gut punch to everyone. I don’t
think any of us had seen so many American casualties from a ‘AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALLY DELIVER HOPE’
single incident, and it was clear that four or five of the Marines After flying four evacuation missions out of HKIA in a matter
had passed away already,” said Lynch. “But after stepping back of days, C-17 pilot Lt. Col. Austin Street was on his first extend-
for a moment, we had to jump-start ourselves out of the shock ed crew rest at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The ramp of the air
because so many wounded were coming in, and we had to be base had been expanded to accommodate more than twice
on our ‘A’ game to take care of all the patients.” the number of C-17s as normal, one of many signs that the
Enlisting the help of a group of Air Force pararescuemen, Globemaster had become the workhorse of Operation Allies
Lynch quickly established a triage point outside the facility. Refuge. Roughly half of the Air Force’s entire fleet of 222 C-17s
He walked up and down the lines of wounded, deciding who had been committed to the operation, and they would evacu-
needed to be rushed into the emergency room, which patients ate more than 79,000 of the more than 124,000 total evacuees,
had less severe wounds that could be treated elsewhere in the including roughly 6,000 Americans.
hospital, and who lacked a pulse and was beyond help. Street, commander of the 21st Airlift Squadron out of Travis
During one of the longest nights of his life, Lynch realized Air Base, Calif., was asleep when the phone call came from the
that the small hospital was in danger of being overwhelmed, operations desk at Al Udied. There had been a mass casualty
doubling up in the emergency room and treating 63 U.S. and suicide bombing at HKIA, and he was designated to command
Afghan wounded in the small facility. The staff had already an Aeromedical Evacuation mission to transport the wounded
confirmed 10 American fatalities, some having died on the op- to Germany. But when Street arrived at the aircraft for the high
erating table. In their mass casualty plan, they had anticipated priority mission, only one maintenance person was on site
having to treat patients without dog tags or easy identification, prepping the aircraft. He also learned that because the heat
so they created packets for them and gave each one the name of in Qatar had the effect of expanding jet fuel, he would have to
a Hollywood celebrity. They quickly ran out of celebrity names launch without a sufficient fuel load to complete the mission.
and had to think of others. To make matters worse, some of the generators at HKIA had
been targeted by saboteurs, meaning he would have to land as they launched the final evacuation flights from HKIA. The
at night without runway lights. suicide bombing days earlier had given his team a renewed
The Aeromedical Evacuation flight was so rushed that the sense of purpose, and they had worked around the clock to get
two aeromedical transport teams and critical care air trans- as many Afghans out of the country as possible in what little
port team onboard had to reconfigure the aircraft to accept time remained. Even in the last 24 hours of operations, they
wounded patients while underway to Kabul. No midair re- had managed to rescue 1,250 additional evacuees
fueling tankers were in range. Once on the ground at HKIA, McClaskey and his team finally policed up the last remnants
Street had to wait two hours on the tarmac with the aircraft of equipment at HKIA, determined to leave nothing of combat
engines running because some of the critically wounded pas- usefulness for the Taliban fighters they could see all around
sengers were just out of surgery and needed to be stabilized the airport’s perimeter, their signature black-and-white flags
before transport. unfurled. Everything that couldn’t fit into the rear of a C-17
Once again, Street took off without enough fuel to complete was destroyed.
the mission and reach Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Initially That evening under the cover of darkness, five C-17s would
air command and control could identify no tankers in range, help the 82nd Airborne Division execute a joint tactical ex-
but they finally located a KC-135 tanker on “strip alert” in the filtration, flying the remaining 800 U.S. personnel at HKIA,
region. Street conducted a tricky midair refueling at night including the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, to safety.
over the Black Sea, while in his cargo bay a critical care team The C-17s were supported by more than 20 orbiting aircraft
performed emergency surgery on a wounded patient. stacked overhead, to include command-and-control, strike,
“I’ve flown the C-17 for 15 years, and that was not only and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms.
the most important and significant mission I ever flew, it When the ramp closed on his C-17 on Aug. 30, 2021, Mc-
was also the most challenging,” Street said in an interview. Claskey knew his long Afghan War was over.
At Air Mobility Command, he noted, their mission mantra “At that point, I thought about the first time I flew into Af-
is to ‘project power and deliver hope.’ “Well, I’ve had lots of ghanistan right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and how many
opportunities to project combat power into war zones, but subsequent birthdays I had spent flying to this country. I also
I’ve rarely had the opportunity to deliver hope. That’s why thought about the thousands and thousands of Americans
I’m so proud of my crew for pushing through and overcoming injured and killed there, some of whom I had flown out of
the most challenging conditions I ever witnessed. This entire there, and the countless lives and families changed as a result
operation was an opportunity to actually deliver hope, not of this war,” said McClaskey. “It was an eerie feeling, and a lot
only to our own wounded, but also to all the Afghans trying to to unpack. I’d spent my entire career fighting in these conflicts,
get out of Kabul. That allowed the American military to keep and now it was all over. At that moment, I couldn’t wait to call
faith with many of those Afghans that we’ve built trust with my wife and tell her we were on our way home.” J
over the past 20 years.”
‘AN EERIE FEELING’ James C. Kitfield is a contributing national security corre-

On the final day of Operation Allies Refuge, McClaskey led spondent and author, and a three-time recipient of the Gerald
a skeleton crew from the 821st Contingency Response Group R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.
U.S. Army
paratroopers
prepare to board a
U.S. Air Force C-17
on Aug. 30, 2021, at
the Hamid Karzai
International Airport
in Afghanistan. The
final flight of U.S.
personnel left the
country just before
midnight, bringing
an end to the
Master Sgt. Alexander Burnett, 82nd Airborne Public Affairs
20-year conflict.

AFA IN ACTION
By Patrick Reardon
The Air Force’s Legends of Yesterday

Meet the Legends of Tomorrow
USAF
The Legends: Gen. John Hyten, Gen. John Jumper, Gen. Richard Myers, Gen. Lloyd Newton, Gen. Lori Robinson, Gen. Larry Spencer,
Maj. Gen. Suzanne Vautrinot, CMSAF Frederick Finck, CMSAF Gerald Murray, CMSgt. Harold Hutchinson, and CMSgt. Gerado Tapia.
T
o celebrate the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, the Air & Space the 916th Air Refueling Wing, where the Legends toured the new
Forces Association set out to connect 11 “living legends” from KC-46 Pegasus tanker.
Air Force history with Airmen and Guardians in the force today. “I could not be more proud to be here standing in front of Airmen
The Legends—six retired four-star generals, one retired two-star again,” Jumper said. “They’re the same quality, motivated the same
general, two former Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force, and two way, and took the same oath that I did many, many decades ago.”
retired chief master sergeants—visited eight Air Force and Space The panels came to life as Airmen took the microphone to pose
Force bases between July and August, crisscrossing the country questions. No subject was off limits, and the Legends shared sto-
to share their stories and experiences with some 3,500 Airmen ries of their greatest personal failures; coping with policy changes;
and Guardians. Their visits opened an intergenerational dialogue being “voluntold” to take on undesired duties; dealing with political
between the legends of yesterday and tomorrow. divisiveness; encouraging service; and everything in between.
The genesis of the 75th Anniversary Legends Tour was a con- The questions and responses were unscripted and uncoached.
versation between two retired generals: Gen. John P. Jumper (the Attending Airmen were encouraged to ask tough questions.
Air Force’s 17th Chief of Staff) and AFA President Lt. Gen. Bruce When one Airman asked how the Legends overcame the darkest
“Orville” Wright. They wanted to create a way to connect Active-duty periods in their lives, Spencer spoke out about military suicide rates
Airmen and Guardians with the wisdom and knowledge of retired and the necessity for anyone to seek help when one needs it.
senior leaders. “There is no stigma,” he said. “You need to get the help that you
The Legends Tour was organized by the Gen. Jimmy Doolittle need. So please, find whatever that is for you.”
Leadership Center (DLC) and its director, Patrick Donley, a retired Other conversations got personal: Murray opened up to a group
Air Force colonel and former National War College instructor. of junior Airmen about the personal demons he fought to save his
“Just as every superhero has an origin story, the Legends on this marriage early in his career. Tapia acknowledged he would have
stage and those visiting the units are a part of your origin story,” been discharged for bad behavior had it not been for the trust of
Donley told the audience at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., one particular boss who saw something in him worth cultivating.
in August. “They are part of your family tree, and they are some of Spencer told his origin story about how, as an E-3, a chief master
the giants on whose shoulders you stand.” sergeant demonstrated to him the importance of holding yourself
Seymour Johnson, the fourth stop on the Legends Tour, hosted to worthwhile standards.
Jumper; former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard “When I was 18 years old, I had an afro like you could not believe,”
B. Myers; former Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Spencer; Spencer said. Despite being in the Air Force, he refused to get it cut.
Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force #14 Gerald Murray; and Every day when he went to work at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo.,
retired Chief Master Sgt. Gerardo Tapia. he would hide his hair under his cap in an act of defiance—until the
The group participated in panel discussions and unit visits, with day a chief master sergeant caught him, drove him to a barbershop
stops at the 4th Medical Group, the 336th Rocket MX Hangar, and in his pickup truck, and got him a military cut.
Senior Airman Kylie Barrow
Members of the Air & Space Forces Association, the 4th Fighter Wing, and the 916th Air Refueling Wing pose for a group photo
during the AFA Legends Tour at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. The AFA mission is to promote dominant U.S. Air and Space
Forces as the foundation of a strong National Defense as well as honoring and supporting Airmen, Guardians, and their families.
It wasn’t punishment, Spencer said, but an act of leadership. That generation that ever existed,” Jumper said. “And it’s going to be your
chief told Spencer it was time to take himself (and his service) seriously, legacy, your pride that you’re able to accept that … develop that …
then encouraged him to enroll in the college classes he’d been avoiding. deploy that and use that. That’s going to be your legacy.”
A few years later, that Chief was on hand when Spencer graduated. The Legends repeatedly emphasized how responsibility for making
“That chief master sergeant talked to me in a way that no one ever positive change rests on the shoulders of every Airman. That’s true
talked to me before,” he said. “He wasn’t chewing me out. He cared whether they’re sharing a new or better way to do something or
about me—turned my life around.” changing culture and policy.
The common thread woven through Spencer’s story and the other “Learn how to go stand on somebody’s desk,” said Spencer. “If you
Legends’ stories was leadership, and that leaders don’t have to be those have a good idea, it’s going to break through. So don’t give up—please.”
at the highest ranks or with the most gray hairs. Leadership involves The 75th Anniversary Legends Tour weaves past and present to-
action and communication. gether, with the aim of reinforcing the future. But reinforcement worked
Indeed, the Legends found the discussions with Airmen were not a in the other direction, as well. Speaking for all of the Legends, Spencer
one-way street in which wisdom flowed from them to others. On the told Airmen at Seymour Johnson, “Now I get to go home knowing my
contrary, they found inspiration in the Active-duty Airmen of today, Air Force is in good hands.”
who they said are shaping their own legacy. The value of the tour was not lost on the Airmen, who were over-
“You are smarter, and you are better prepared to do that than any heard to make remarks like, “This was exactly what we needed to
Members of the Air

& Space Forces
Association speak
to Airmen assigned
to the 4th Fighter
Wing during the AFA
Legends Tour.
AFA works to
advocate and
promote aerospace
power that will
favorably shape
Senior Airman Kevin Holloway
policy and resourcing

decisions.

hear,” according to Donley.
Donley said AFA and the Doolittle Leadership
Center hope to lead additional Legends Tours in the
future and are seeking sponsors to help underwrite
the cost and continue providing tomorrow’s Legends
with the encouragement and support they need today.
“In every session there were powerful moments,”
Senior Airman Kylie Barrow

Donley said. “[The Legends] spoke to the Airmen
with surprising candor and transparency. Having
listened to all of their engagements and been a re-
peat beneficiary of the wisdom that they’re sharing,
I’m confident that this tour has been immeasurably
valuable. And from this start, I’m sincerely hoping there
will be more opportunities for similar engagements in An Airman assigned to the 916th Air Refueling Wing shows the different
the future.” J functions of the KC-46A Pegasus during the Air & Space Forces Association’s
Legends Tour at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., in August.
Legends of Air & Space Buckley Space Force Base, Colo.

Gen. Richard Myers, 15th Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff
Eleven Air Force Legends joined one or more legs of the Air & (active 1965-2005)
Space Forces Association’s inaugural Legends Tour to visit some Gen. John Hyten, 11th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
3,500 Airmen and Guardians at eight bases in a series of visits over (active 1981-2021)
four weeks. The Legends, all General Officers and Chiefs, varied by Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005)
location. Maj. General Suzanne Vautrinot, Commander, 24th Air Force
(active 1982-2013)
Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006)
Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005) Chief Master Sgt. Gerardo Tapia, Command Chief Master Sgt. Air
Gen. Lori Robinson, Commander of USNORTHCOM and NORAD Education and Training Command (active 1985-2016)
(active 1981-2018)
Gen. Lloyd Newton, Commander of Air Education and Training U.S. Air Force Academy, Colo.
Command (active 1966-2000) Gen. Richard Myers, 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006) (active 1965-2005)
Chief Master Sgt. Harold Hutchison, Command Senior Enlisted Gen. John Hyten, 11th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Leader of NORAD/NORTHCOM (active 1985-2018) (active 1981-2021)
Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005)
Creech Air Force Base, Nev. Maj. General Suzanne Vautrinot, Commander, 24th Air Force
Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005) (active 1982-2013)
Gen. Lori Robinson, Commander of USNORTHCOM and NORAD CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006)
(active 1981-2018) Chief Master Sgt. Gerardo Tapia, Command Chief Master Sgt. Air
Gen. Lloyd Newton, Commander of Air Education and Training Education and Training Command (active 1985-2016)
Command (active 1966-2000)
Chief Master Sgt. Harold Hutchison, Command Senior Enlisted Peterson Space Force Base, Colo.
Leader of NORAD/NORTHCOM (active 1985-2018) Gen. Richard Myers, 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(active 1965-2005)
Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. Gen. John Hyten, 11th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gen. Richard Myers, 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (active 1981-2021)
(active 1965-2005) Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005)
Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005) Maj. General Suzanne Vautrinot, Commander, 24th Air Force
Gen. Lloyd Newton, Commander of Air Education and Training (active 1982-2013)
Command (active 1966-2000) CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006)
CMSAF #13 Jim Finch (active 1972-2002) Chief Master Sgt. Gerardo Tapia, Command Chief Master Sgt. Air
CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006) Education and Training Command (active 1985-2016)
Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. Schriever Space Force Base, Colo.
Gen. Richard Myers, 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(active 1965-2005) (active 1965-2005)
Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005) Gen. John Hyten, 11th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gen. Larry Spencer, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force (active (active 1981-2021)
1971-2015) Gen. John Jumper, 17th Air Force Chief of Staff (active 1966-2005)
CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006) Maj. General Suzanne Vautrinot, Commander, 24th Air Force
Chief Master Sgt. Gerardo Tapia, Command Chief Master Sgt. Air (active 1982-2013)
Education and Training Command (active 1985-2016) CMSAF #14 Gerald Murray (active 1977-2006)
Chief Master Sgt. Gerardo Tapia, Command Chief Master Sgt. Air
Education and Training Command (active 1985-2016)

AFA IN ACTION
By Gabbe Kearney
Interns at the Pentagon
Courtesy of Arnold Air Society/Silver Wings

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. posed with a dozen of the 16 Arnold Air Society/Silver Wings cadets who held
internships in the Pentagon this summer.
S
ixteen Arnold Air Society/Silver Wings members earned The primary focus of the work being produced was compiling
coveted Pentagon summer internships in 2022. A few current intel and threats in regard to Space for senior leadership.
shared their stories in their own words with AFA field During this time I was able to largely observe how products
leader Gabbe Kearney. are produced, attend different briefings, and begin to write on
various topics.
2nd Lt. Hannah Olver was a member of the Andrew Dougherty I found this experience to be extremely rewarding. The people
Silver Wings Chapter at Rochester Institute of Technology, she was that I worked with on a daily basis created an experience where
the National Development Officer for her senior year, leading the I was welcomed. There was always an open invitation to learn
growth of the Silver Wings membership nationwide. Olver earned more, ask questions, and receive feedback to better myself. I felt
her commission from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Air surrounded by some of the most intelligent and hardworking
Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) program. She people I have met to date.
graduated with a nursing degree from Roberts Wesleyan College, As I prepare to go to Intel School in the fall as an officer in the
N.Y. She received the Silver Valor Space Force, I am excited to bring this experience, knowledge,
Award for swift actions to save and abundance of advice with me.”
the life of a fellow cadet who
was choking during the annual Cadet Antonio (Tony) Capelo is a rising fifth-year cadet in the
AFROTC Field Training that took AFROTC program at North Carolina State University. He is ma-
place in May 21 at Camp Shelby joring in Mechanical Engineering
in Mississippi. Olver helped a ca- and minoring in Aerospace Stud-
det who accidentally swallowed ies. Capelo was the Mission Sup-
a valve-cap from a water bottle. port Commander and had many
The Silver Valor Award is given achievements in his previous
AAS/SW
to a cadet for a voluntary act of position in the detachment and

heroism. currently serves as the Training
Olver “I am very thankful for Silver Squadron Commander. In addi-
Wings and the connections and tion, he is also this year’s National
opportunity to work at the Pentagon under senior leadership. Development Officer for the Silver
This truly was an experience unlike any other. At the Pentagon Wings Nation as a member of the
AAS/SW
I worked under Space Force S2A Analysis and Production from Martha Metz Chapter.
May to August. I worked Under Brig. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, “I can confidently start off by Capelo
Director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and saying this internship was the
Brad Edmonson. most beneficial and rewarding opportunity I have had as a
cadet. The chance to work in the Pentagon is amazing enough Cadet Sidney Walters is a member of the Andrew Turner Arnold
already, but having opportunities like meeting the CSAF and Air Society Squadron and is also the Cadet Wing Mission Support
CSO is the cherry on top. Squadron Commander for Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps
During my time at the Pentagon, I primarily worked for Leg- (AFROTC) Detachment 130, Howard University, Washington, D.C.
islative Liaison Correspondence, Office of the Secretary of the “SAF/IA, also known as Secretary of the Air Force Internation-
Air Force (SAF/LLC), but would occasionally work at Legislative al Affairs, is a department known for its partnership in aiding
Liaison Strategy. international trade on behalf of the United States Air Force and
My main responsibilities were to receive, coordinate, and Space Force. Housed at the Pentagon, this large department
respond to congressional correspondence, execution of the Leg- works to continue partnerships around the world. SAF/IA’s
islative Fellowship and Action Officer Orientation, facilitate com- aids senior leaders in completing “successful engagements
munication with Air University regarding the Air Force Immersion with allies and partners; work with the interagency, foreign
and Professional Military Education Program for congressional governments, and nongovernmental officials … to advance
staff, and finalizing any existing congressional inquiries. mission priorities.” Their mission is: Advance U.S. national
My goal coming into the internship was to expand my breadth security by cultivating deep, enduring relationships through
about how the Air Force operated at the departmental level and security cooperation with our Allies and Partners in support of
to learn more about politics since my background was mainly U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force global operations. Under
mechanical engineering. SAF/IA there are two directorates, Policy and Programs (SAF/
I easily accomplished these goals within the first few weeks IAP) and Regional Affairs (SAF/IAR).
because my assignment gave me additional opportunities outside Policy and Programs focuses on the tools used to make se-
of the ones provided to all the interns. curity cooperation and other programing possible, they are the
I had the opportunity to sit in on the House Armed Services logistical side of business.
Committee (HASC) Readiness Hearing with all the vices from Regional Affairs focuses on the
the service branches and saw them field a variety of questions emotional side of business. This
from the representatives. I got to sit in on a crash course of how directorate has FAOs or Foreign
Congress works from one of the most reputable, independent Area Officers, Desk Officers, and
defense lobbyist, Jeff Green. Country Directors.
I was “kidnapped” by Chief Schneider, and she introduced me SAF/IA is an “integrator of the
to Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson and Department of the Air Force se-
Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass. My sponsor, curity cooperation enterprise and
Doug Altrichter, brought me to District Director Fly-Ins so I got to the front door for international
AAS/SW
understand how important it was to develop good relations with allies and partners.” This depart-
the representatives’ team back in their home states. On top of that, ment tries to incorporate most if
he and the Division Chief, Colonel Sundstrom, always took me to not all their security collaboration Walters
the weekly division meetings so I experienced the intricacies of under one single organization,
Secretary of the Air Force/Legislative Liaison (SAF/LL). making them very different from other services. This collaboration
The most memorable lesson about how the Department of the leads to a lot of the success one sees between the U.S. Air Force
Air Force operates with Congress was from Maj. Gen. Christopher and U.S. Space Force and their allies.
E. Finerty, Director, Legislative Liaison. I remember him saying This summer I worked in the SAF/IARA division in Regional
in a weekly meeting that ‘Congress can make the NDAA without Affairs. I wanted the opportunity to see business conducted
the input of the DOD and make whatever budget they think is between the USAF and their international partners in the Amer-
appropriate because they aren’t mandated to include the DOD’s icas and Africa. SAF/IARA is the biggest division with the most
opinion. However, they want the DOD’s opinion because they countries to cover. SAF/IARA’s mission is: Integrate Security
want to make sure we get what we need. That is exactly why it cooperation, Security Assistance, Pol-Mil Strategy, and Strate-
is necessary for us to have an open line of communication with gic Communication actions with Partner Nations for the United
them and make sure we are giving them exactly what they need States Air Force.
in a quick manner.’ I learned how SAF/IA builds programs that benefit the USAF,
Being able to sit in at the HASC-Readiness hearing and sitting USSF, and U.S. allies. Meeting air chiefs/generals of other mil-
down with Gen. Charles Q. Brown and Gen. John “Jay” Raymond itaries is how negotiations flourish and become many of the
were the coolest opportunities while I was there. programs you see today. A lot of their time is spent traveling to
The day I will probably reminisce about the most was my last conferences, other countries, and air bases to conduct business
day where I raced against Lt. Col. Petrash in the morning (I won) with allies. Their key functions include facilitating Foreign Military
and Maj. Gen. Finerty coining me at a farewell party. Sales from beginning to end.
I want to specifically call out Col. Julia Sundstrom, Division I got to experience and witness a lot of things that the average
Chief of LLC, Mr. Doug Altrichter, Deputy Division Chief of LLC, cadet would not. I was able to meet the Air Chief of Chile and
Lt. Col. Eric Hendrickson, Lt. Col. Donald Petrash, and Dominique converse with him over lunch in Spanish. I spoke with his trusted
Wellons. Everyone I worked with made my internship amazing officials about the future of the Air Force and more importantly
but these five specific individuals made a massive impact on the strong partnership that exists between the United States and
my time there. Chile. I attended classified meetings and was able to meet the
Needless to say, I had a plethora of opportunities and expe- Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the Chief of Space Operations.
riences from SAF/LL and am extremely grateful to them. They Learning from them and gaining mentorship was monumental.
trusted me to do actual work. They gave me a treasure-trove Overall, I accumulated an immense amount of valuable informa-
of knowledge and went out of their way to show me the cool tion as well as [gaining] several mentors from different career
aspects of the job.” fields and branches. I would not trade this experience for the
world!” J
FACES OF THE FORCE
Staff Sgt. Victoria Nelson/ANG

Staff Sgt. Candin Muniz
Rodney Speed/USAF
Airman 1st Class Alvaro Villagomez

Seven years ago, Master Master Sgt. Mathue Snow, In July in Pelham, N.H.,
Sgt. Bridget Carroll of the 78th Security Forces Squad- Senior Airman Amy Gran-
727th Special Operations Air- ron flight chief, received a field, a public health techni-
craft Maintenance Squadron Bronze Star Medal at Robins cian with the 157th Medical
was part of team tasked with Air Force Base, Ga., on Sept. Group, was wakesurfing on
reducing cargo taken on an 9, in support of Operation Long Pond when a fast-trav- The Air Force could save up to 40,000 man-hours
MQ-1 Predator alert package. Octave Shield at Manda eling Jet Ski crashed into and approximately $1 million per year, thanks to an
Her proposed solution, the Bay Airfield, Kenya, in 2019 the side of Granfield’s boat, invention from Airman 1st Class Jacob Helzer at RAF
Digital Aircraft Link Emulator, and 2020. In particular, he knocking her, her brother, Mildenhall, U.K.—a 3D-printed “Boom Cover Tool” that
or DALE, was recently helped to fend off an attack and a friend overboard. The makes the task of removing and installing the boom
deployed and employed for on the base by 30 al-Shabab operator and her passenger cover on a KC-135, normally a 30-minute operation,
the first time. Before DALE, terrorists armed with rock- ended up in the water se- a simple one-minute task. Helzer’s tool costs roughly
it would take more than 10 et-propelled grenades, mor- verely injured, and Granfield $200 to manufacture, and he is currently working to
Airmen to accompany the tars, and small arms. During swam to get them into the produce prototypes for every KC-135 at Mildenhall.
package, set it up, and tow the initial moments of the boat and made a tourniquet After that, he hopes to contract the fabrication of a final,
the RPA around the airfield to attack, Snow rushed to the out of a ski rope to stop more durable prototype and share the Boom Cover
ensure link connections were Joint Defense Operations major blood loss. Granfield Tool throughout the entire fleet and modify the design
made. Today, the DALE can Center, sounded the giant and her party took the Jet to be adopted for other variations of refueling aircraft.
be unloaded and ready for voice system, and quickly Ski operator and passenger
use with two Airmen in less dispatched Defenders to to shore, where they were
than an hour. their defense towers. transferred to paramedics.
Master Sgt. Ryan Campbell/

Airman 1st Class Nicholas
Paczkowski
Courtesy
ANG
Maj. Benjamin Saun- On Sept. 7, 1st Lt. Kelsey With a philosophy of

Kendra Williams/USAF
ders, of the 49th Wing Flannery made history, “unbiased genuine care,
at Holloman Air Force becoming the first female empathy, and respect to
Base, N.M., was named F-35 pilot in the Air National all,” Master Sgt. Crystal
the 2021 Air Force Fighter Guard. The process started in Bateman of the 402nd
Instructor Pilot of the Year 2019, when the Vermont Air Aircraft Maintenance
this August, in recog- At just 13 years old, Jaiya Patillo has already competed National Guard became the Group was named the 2021
nition of his work de- and won against athletes in high school and college. The first guard unit to be assigned Air Force First Sergeant of
veloping combat-ready 400-meter sprinter recently made history as the first mid- the F-35. The 134th Fighter the Year. CMSAF JoAnne
F-16 pilots. An instructor dle schooler to compete against collegiate-level athletes Squadron selected Flannery Bass presented Bateman
since 2018, Saunders and win the South Dakota State University’s Last Chance and a small group out of with the award in San An-
teaches Airmen fresh out track meet in February 2022—and she often trains with hundreds to become the tonio on Aug. 27. Selected
of Undergraduate Pilot Airmen at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., where her mother. Lt. squadron’s newest pilots. She to attend the U.S. Navy
Training how to employ Col. Sheree Patillo serves in the Air Force at U.S. Strategic then attended Officer Training Senior Enlisted Acade-
fighter tactics in the F-16. Command. Now a 14-time Junior Olympian, Patillo won the School, Undergraduate Pilot my, Bateman said she
He also teaches the in- USA Track and Field Junior Olympic Nationals in Sacra- Training, Fighter Fundamen- overcame difficulties and
structors that then go on mento, Calif., at the end of July. tals, and SERE school, before depression thanks to her
to teach other pilots. finally flying the F-35 in the Air “family, friends, command
Force’s “B-course.” team, various mentors, and
first sergeants all over the
Tell us who you think we should highlight here. Write to [email protected]. Air Force.”
S:7"
STARTED BY
25 SOLDIERS
13 MILLION
MEMBERS AND GROWING
100 YEARS
AND GOING STRONG
1 MISSION
S:10"
THROUGH IT ALL
As long as there are those

who serve, USAA will be
there to serve them.
usaa.com/100 | #usaa100
USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its affiliates. ©2022 USAA. 283178-0222

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Take Aways from the Biggest Air, Space & Cyber Conference Ever 20

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