US Air Force News

[James1978]

GAO blasts T-7 delays, cites ‘tenuous’ Air Force-Boeing relationship

By Stephen Losey
May 24, 2023

WASHINGTON — Boeing’s effort to build a new trainer aircraft for the Air Force is plagued by safety problems, schedule and testing delays, and the risk the T-7A Red Hawk could fall even further behind schedule, the Government Accountability Office said in a scathing report.

Boeing’s relationship with the Air Force has also been strained by the T-7′s issues, GAO said in the May 18 report, with service officials describing their ties as “tenuous.”

As the program proceeds and Boeing losses, which already exceed $1 billion, mount, GAO said, program officials expect more disagreements between the Air Force and the contractor. While the Air Force waits for the T-7 to be delivered, its own costs related to maintaining older jets could grow, the report warned.

Boeing said in a statement to Defense News it plans to keep working with the service to fix the problems highlighted in the report, but did not address specific issues asked about by Defense News.

“Boeing and the U.S. Air Force are partnered on a path forward regarding these issues,” the company said. “Additionally, we continue to evaluate findings and discovery during testing activities, which is standard practice when developing a new aircraft.”

Boeing in 2018 won an indefinite delivery contract, estimated to be worth up to $9.2 billion, to build the Air Force’s new jet trainer, set to replace the more than half-century-old T-38 Talon.

Student pilots will be able to use this advanced trainer to learn to fly jets akin to advanced fighters such as the F-35, which has capabilities that didn’t exist when the T-38 was first built. New capabilities the T-7 will bring include fly-by-wire controls and high-altitude maneuverability. Additionally, this trainer will allow students to learn advanced air-to-air maneuvers and be able to accommodate pilots of varying sizes, including men and women.

A shaky schedule
The T-7 has seen several schedule delays. Most recently, problems with a potentially dangerous escape system and ejection seat caused the Air Force to postpone to February 2025 a milestone C production decision on the T-7. The Air Force originally expected that decision to come in late 2023.

This means Boeing is now expected to start delivering the T-7 in December 2025, and the Air Force is preparing for it to reach initial operational capability in spring 2027 at the earliest. That would be nearly a decade after the Air Force originally hoped to have student pilots flying in its advanced trainer.

But program officials told GAO that even the new schedule Boeing laid out in January 2023 is “likely optimistic” because it “depends on favorable assumptions.”

Boeing’s revised T-7 schedule assumes the program will have a high success rate through the rest of its development and testing, Air Force officials told GAO. This leaves “little to no margin” for error, including test failures, unexpected software revisions, a possible need to redesign the escape system, or other surprises, GAO said.

If something goes wrong, the report added, the T-7 program could fall even further behind — perhaps significantly so, potentially jeopardizing even the revised production decision date and further pushing back production and delivery.

The Air Force is now planning to have the T-7′s development, testing and production phases considerably overlap, GAO said, which will add a great deal more risk to the schedule.

This approach, known as concurrency, can lead to rising costs or further schedule delays because if testing finds hidden problems, the contractor could have to go back into aircraft that have already been built to fix those issues.

Program officials told GAO they doubted overlapping development and testing would lead to major changes to the T-7, and said concurrency had not driven up program costs.

But such problems have happened before, GAO said, citing a previous 2018 report that found it would cost an additional $1.4 billion to fix problems in F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that had been built before testing was complete.

Boeing also plans to start building the first production T-7s before the Air Force officially places its order, GAO said, which could carry further risks. Boeing started building some parts for the T-7 in early 2022 on its own dime, GAO said, and plans to start assembling the first aircraft by early 2024, the report said.

GAO said this means construction would start about a year before the Air Force plans to place its first order for the aircraft, which will happen no sooner than February 2025 after development and a great deal of testing has been finished. And by the time the Air Force places its order, the report said, government officials believe Boeing could have finished building seven to 10 T-7s it could present to the service.

GAO said Boeing told the Air Force in March 2022 it had already started building some parts that would go into the T-7 — even though the Air Force warned Boeing two months earlier it was under no obligation to buy trainer jets built with those parts until it placed an order. The Air Force also told Boeing any work it does has to meet all requirements for future orders.

Boeing told GAO it began initial construction on planes that could eventually be delivered to the Air Force because it faced pressure to keep its suppliers busy and manufacturing costs down, particularly with schedule delays and financial losses mounting.

But this presents “significant risks” to the Air Force, GAO said. Because no contract is in place for building those aircraft, GAO said, the Air Force and the Defense Contract Management Agency can’t conduct all the production oversight needed to make sure the planes will meet contract requirements. Even conducting oversight, DCMA warned the Air Force, could have the unintended effect of committing the Air Force to accept some of Boeing’s work on the T-7, even without a contract, the report said.

The T-7 could also change significantly between the test phase and the award of a low-rate production contract, which would then have to be retrofitted on already-built planes, GAO said. DCMA has already spotted more than 8,000 differences between the five test T-7s Boeing has already built, and the Air Force’s own contract specifications, the report added.

Older trainers, rising costs
While these delays likely won’t drive up the T-7′s price for the Air Force, GAO said they could lead to other rising costs. With the T-7 still years away from becoming operational, the service will need to keep training student pilots in its existing fleet of 504 T-38s and — to handle the more advanced aspects of pilot training — the F-22, which costs more than eight times as much to fly per hour than the T-38 and T-7. In all, GAO estimated trainer delays could cost the Air Force almost $1 billion.

The Air Force is also at risk of higher costs if it can’t order all 351 T-7s it plans to buy before the ordering period expires, GAO said. The Air Force now expects Boeing to start building the first four production T-7s in 2025 and gradually ramp up production until Boeing builds 48 Red Hawks each year between 2030 and 2033. The final 18 T-7s are expected to be built in 2034.

In an issue that echoes a lingering headache with the F-35 program, the Air Force told GAO it doesn’t have all the data from Boeing that it needs to maintain the T-7.

By January 2023, Boeing had provided the Air Force one-third of the list of parts and quantities used to build and maintain the T-7, known as a bill of materials. That is more than three years later than the contract specified, GAO said, and some of the information the Air Force needs to conduct its own maintenance was redacted.

Boeing told GAO some suppliers were not under contract at first and said its periodically updating the program office.

The Air Force wants to do as much “organic,” or in-house, maintenance on the T-7 as possible. But without that data, GAO said, it may be forced to rely upon Boeing for maintenance and repairs.

The Air Force also needs the list of parts so it can manage its supply chain, and find replacements for parts as they become obsolete, GAO said. Without that bill of materials, the Air Force told GAO it won’t know what equipment it will need to maintain the test aircraft the service plans to begin flight-testing at Edwards Air Force Base in California this September.

Ejection seat delaying tests
Problems with the T-7′s escape system have already delayed the plane’s testing, GAO said, and the system will likely need several more revisions to its design and test before it is safe enough to use.

The Air Force only allowed men to fly when older planes such as the T-38 were originally built, so their cockpits were not designed to accommodate some women or people with smaller frames. The T-7 is intended to be safe and comfortable for pilots with a wide range of body sizes and shapes.

But GAO said tests of the T-7′s escape system show considerable risks for many pilots — even larger people — including potential concussions, spinal injuries, or eye and neck injuries. Tests conducted with the largest manikins barely pass the Air Force’s safety standards, the report said, and smaller and average-sized manikins were at greater risk.

After 2021 tests raised alarm bells about the T-7′s escape system, Boeing worked to improve it. The Air Force said minor adjustments to the seat improved safety and reduced the risk to pilots.

A subsequent sled test in February 2023 showed enough progress that the service plans to proceed with a limited military flight release, allowing its pilots to begin test-flying the T-7 while the final problems with the escape system are fixed. In a sled test designed to simulate an ejection sequence, the Air Force accelerates a rail-mounted cockpit with a manikin inside to speeds similar to a T-7 in flight before launching the manikin.

But even that testing plan means the Air Force is likely almost two years away from showing the escape system meets all the safety requirements.

The Air Force and Boeing also disagree over how close the T-7′s flight control software is to being finished, GAO said. Boeing expects the software will be done by the middle of this year, the report said, but the Air Force’s own software experts said five or six more revisions to the software will be needed to fix problems with the trainer’s flight control, particularly as the T-7 takes on more challenging flights such as conducting maneuvers when climbing or diving at high angles of attack.

Each iteration could take six more months, Air Force experts told GAO, which could delay the completion of the software by more than two years and — if the changes are significant — could disrupt flight testing.

In a sign of the tensions over the program, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on Monday said the concept of digital engineering — which Boeing has touted as a revolutionary advancement in how new aircraft can be built — has in some ways been “overhyped.”

Engineers have been using digital tools to design aircraft for decades, Kendall said at a breakfast roundtable with reporters hosted by the Defense Writers Group, after being asked about the T-7′s delays and the fanfare that accompanied its digital design. Modern computing and data storage advancements have given engineers the ability to process vast amounts of information and swiftly communicate with one another, he said, allowing digital design processes to be fully integrated, he said.

This has led to notable cost and schedule savings, Kendall said. But digital advancements won’t replace real-world testing, he said — particularly when engineers are trying to “push the envelope” on entirely new designs and don’t have models upon which they can fully rely.

“It is a significant improvement, but it has been overhyped,” Kendall said. “More integrated digital designs, better modeling all help, but they’re not revolutionary. They’re a significant improvement, [but] they don’t replace testing entirely. When you’re doing something that’s going to be radically different than prior programs, you’ve got to get it into testing.”

[James1978]

GAO Faults DOD for Lax Oversight of F-35 Spare Parts
May 23, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon lacks oversight of potentially millions of spare parts for the F-35, a new Government Accountability Office report states—meaning the F-35 Joint Program Office has not been able to review losses worth tens of millions of dollars in recent years.

“DOD’s lack of accountability over the F-35 global spares pool affects its ability to resolve the material weakness related to the F-35 program,” the report concluded.

The report marks yet another problem for the fighter jet’s sustainment enterprise, which continues to concern Pentagon officials, lawmakers, and acquisition experts over the F-35’s high operating costs, its balking Autonomic Information Logistics System, and a chronic shortages of some spare parts.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said this week that it was a “serious mistake” to allow Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor, to own the technical baseline of the aircraft, thus controlling the program’s life cycle and creating “a perpetual monopoly” on sustainment, modifications, and upgrades.

Now GAO’s report faults the Defense Department for ceding to Lockheed oversight for spare parts at subcontractor facilities. “The F-35 Joint Program Office does not track or enter these spare parts into an accountable property system of record that would enable it to capture and store real-time changes to property records,” the report states. “Currently, the prime contractors maintain this information.”

Uniquely, the F-35’s global spares pool does not belong to the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and foreign partner. Instead, the F-35 partners buy access to the spares pool. At issue for GAO is whether the spare parts at non-prime contractor facilities are considered government-furnished property (GFP), which ensures the parts are entered into a Pentagon system that allows it to have oversight and information about the costs, locations, and quantities of spare parts in the global spares pool.

Only one of the F-35’s two prime contractors—the report does not specify whether that is Lockheed Martin, responsible for the aircraft, or Pratt & Whitney, which makes the engines—considers such parts government-furnished, so they are not entered into the Pentagon’s system. According to the report, the contractor and agencies within the Defense Department have been debating the point since 2015.

Exactly how many parts are at issue is likewise unclear. GAO report noted that the F-35 Joint Program Office still does not have a full accounting of the cost, total quantity, and locations of spare parts in the global spares pool.

GAO investigators assert that one of the two primes saw more than 1 million parts lost, damaged, or destroyed, a loss of at least $85 million. The report said the F-35 JPO had adjudicated responsibility and liability for just 60,000 of those parts, or less than 2 percent. What’s more, GAO said the program office was entirely dependent on the contractors to report accurately, with no back up means to verify losses.

“For example, losses that have not been reported to the F-35 JPO include 34 actuator doors and 14 batteries with total costs of over $3.2 million and $2.1 million, respectively, that were lost in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2019,” the report noted.

GAO also faulted the program office for failing to stay current on excess, obsolete, or unserviceable spares. Some 19,000 such parts were still awaiting instructions as of last October, according to the report.

GAO offered four recommendations to address its concerns. It said the Pentagon should:

* Take steps to ensure that all spare parts are categorized appropriately and accountable to the government
* Review existing policies for asset accountability and clarify when parts are considered government-furnished property
* Develop a process for contractors to report losses on spare parts not considered GFP until the government can agree on a contract amendment to make those parts GFP
* Develop procedures to provide timely instructions for excess, obsolete, or unserviceable parts

The Pentagon agreed with all four the recommendations, the report noted.

[James1978]

Tardy Training Jet Reveals Limits of Digital Design, Air Force Says
New GAO report says decade-late T-7A program will get later yet.

By Audrey Decker
May 23, 2023

The U.S. Air Force’s decade-late training jet is so wracked with problems—notably in the emergency escape system—that even the service’s updated schedule is unrealistic, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

“The Air Force has yet to resolve significant issues with the escape system, flight software, simulator, and aircraft sustainment,” the report said, while a new schedule issued in January “is also optimistic, relying on favorable outcomes not supported by past performance.”

Long a poster child for digital design, which the Air Force hopes will save time and money, the Boeing-Saab T-7A Red Hawk has instead revealed its limits. On Monday, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall conceded that the promise of digital design was “over-hyped.”

Digital engineering is “very efficient” compared to moving piles of documents around, Kendall said, but it will never replace testing.

“It's not perfect and the T-7 gives you an example of that. It doesn't help you when you're doing a design that's different than anything you've ever done before. Having digital doesn't give you better knowledge about how it's going to work. You end up having to do testing just as we always had,” Kendall told reporters on Monday.

Lawmakers have urged the Air Force to move faster to replace its half-century-old T-38 trainers, which have been involved in several accidents in recent years.

Earlier this year, the service pushed back a production decision on the T-7A to February 2025 and moved initial operating capability to January 2027. But GAO said this new schedule is “likely optimistic since the schedule for several areas depends on favorable assumptions,” according to the report, which was released Friday.

While Boeing and the Air Force have both cited progress on the ejection seat, GAO said Boeing will need to “execute several more design iterations and tests to resolve the problems.”

The watchdog agency said the Air Force is likely two years away from demonstrating a safe escape system. The Air Force declined to say when exactly the ejection seat will be ready, but said it will be before the 2025 production decision, according to a spokesperson.

Boeing, which has built five test aircraft and two flying prototypes for the T-7, has said more rigorous flight testing will begin this summer after it receives “military flight release,” which essentially clears the aircraft for flight.

One reason the GAO is dubious about the Air Force’s professed two-year schedule is the slow pace of previous tests. After a sled test in late 2021, more than 15 months passed before the following test was successfully executed last February, the report said. The Air Force told GAO that seven more tests are needed before the plane can be declared safe.

“The Air Force tested some design changes for the [trainer] escape system in its February 2023 test, but program officials said the system, in order to meet airworthiness criteria, needs at least seven additional tests to achieve confidence in the system. These seven tests include the three remaining tests funded under the study and four more that the contractor is planning to conduct,” the report said.

Boeing has reported more than $1 billion in losses on the program. The company originally underbid the T-7 competition, and delays and new charges have added additional pressures.

“Air Force program officials said that they expect what they call a tenuous relationship with the contractor to remain a key element of managing the program, especially as the contractor continues to lose money,” GAO said.

A Boeing spokesperson said that the company and the Air Force are “partnered on a path forward” to work on the trainer’s escape system.

“The team completed a successful sled shot on Feb. 1, 2023 to test the system and provide confidence. Additionally, we continue to evaluate findings and discovery during testing activities which is standard practice when developing a new aircraft,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

[James1978]

Kendall: Digital Engineering Was ‘Over-Hyped,’ But Can Save 20 Percent on Time and Cost
May 23, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Digital engineering can save about 20 percent in time and money over the approaches of just a few years ago, but its benefits have been exaggerated and it is not a revolutionary method that will radically cut development time and cost, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said May 22.

“It was over-hyped,” Kendall told reporters at a Defense Writers Group meeting.

Instead, Kendall said while digital engineering works best with technologies that are already well understood, it requires at least as much real-world testing when it is applied to all-new things.

Kendall’s remarks offer a note of caution after defense and Air Force officials alike have hailed the practice of designing new systems entirely in the digital realm as a revolutionary change in how the Pentagon will do business.

While the benefits of digital engineering are inarguable, Kendall said—such as allowing industry and government design specialists to see “exactly the state of a design or a program” at the same time—there are limits.

“I’ve tried to get reasonable data on how much” digital engineering saves in cost and schedule, he said. “My best feel for that is, it’s on the order of 20 percent, as a ballpark number.”

While that figure is significant, it’s not on the order of ten times or more, Kendall noted.

“With the capacity of modern computing capabilities, data storage, and communications to handle large amounts of data, we’ve been able to integrate our models,” Kendall said. “So, models that worked independently and had to be correlated—somewhat manually—can now talk to each other. And so you get a fully-integrated digital design, whereas before you would have had to do different parts of the design separately.”

This approach is paying dividends with the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, he said.

“The program office for NGAD is living in the same design space, if you will, as the NGAD bidders,” he said. “They have direct access into the database that’s being used for the design.” Visiting the program office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Kendall said he saw “a government engineer, who was very capable, working directly with one of the two contractors—he was on one of the teams—and interfacing with them on the design.”

Such an arrangement decreases back-and-forth and reduces misunderstanding, Kendall said. But the Air Force has to be careful not to let those efficiencies go to waste.

“One of the things that’s been true in engineering forever is that if you give an engineer more time, he’ll just do more design iterations because no engineer is ever completely happy with what he’s designed,” Kendall noted.

“So there’s a risk that we’ll just take advantage of the efficiency … to do more, right? What we need to do is get to where we’re comfortable with it, and then go forward with the next stage of development.”

Industry, he said, is motivated to get designs into production, so digital engineering “hopefully … will help us get into production more efficiently, more effectively.”

But he scoffed at the notion that digital engineering can drastically reduce the amount of testing required of new systems.

“Back in the F-35 [design] days I remember industry coming in and saying, ‘we’re so good at engineering now, we don’t need to do testing anymore,’” Kendall said. “That’s not true. And it’s particularly not true when you push the envelope outside of things you’ve done before, where … you don’t have as much confidence in your models.”

When designing a system that represents “a small incremental improvement,” the Air Force and its contractors can be confident that its digital model is accurate, Kendall said.

“But when you’re doing something that’s going to be radically different than prior programs, you’ve got to get into testing to validate … your design efforts,” he noted.

A prime example of that is the T-7 Advanced Trainer, being developed by Boeing. After being digitally designed and flying just three years after its conception, the aircraft is now two years behind schedule in reaching Initial Operational Capability, due largely to the ejection/escape system not performing as expected, particularly with pilot manikins at the low end of the range of physiques the jet must accommodate. Boeing has also faulted supply chain and workforce issues as contributing to the delay.

“You see this all the time,” Kendall said. “Hypersonics are a good example: If you haven’t done it before, you’re going to have to go and actually do it.”

Perhaps the biggest test of digital engineering thus far might be Northrop Grumman’s B-21 bomber, a project generally regarded as having had few major hiccups in development. Kendal said he is being “cautious” in his remarks about the program, though, for a simple reason: “We haven’t flown yet.”

Famously quoted as saying the F-35 was an example of “acquisition malpractice,” Kendall said the main issue with that program “was the too-early start of production, and we had a lot of design changes we had to make after we started production.” He doesn’t want to repeat that with the B-21.

“There’s a balance, there,” he said. “There’ll be some concurrency between both B-21 and NGAD, between development and production, but you want to do that in a rational way that doesn’t take excessive risk.”

[James1978]

Air Force two-star to retire as colonel after sex crime conviction
By Rachel S. Cohen
May 30, 2023

Maj. Gen. Bill Cooley, the former Air Force Research Laboratory commander who was convicted of abusive sexual contact last spring, will retire as a colonel on Thursday, two sources tell Air Force Times.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall chose to demote the two-star general to a field-grade officer after the April 2022 trial, an Air Force Materiel Command spokesperson said Tuesday.

“The Department of the Air Force expects its leaders to embody our core values and holds them accountable if they fall short of expectations,” the spokesperson said.

Cooley was charged with three counts of abusive sexual contact under Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which covers sex-related crimes.

Following a weeklong court-martial at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, a military judge found Cooley guilty of one count for forcibly kissing his brother’s wife in a car after a barbeque in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in August 2018.

“She is grateful the Air Force stripped him of this coveted title, and hopes that her coming forward contributes to a meaningful change in a culture that has led to epidemic levels of sexual harassment and assault within our military ranks,” said Ryan Guilds, a pro bono legal advocate for Cooley’s accuser.

The woman agreed to be publicly identified by her relationship to the defendant, but not by name. Air Force Times does not publish the names of sexual assault victims without their permission to protect their privacy.

The judge found Cooley not guilty of the other two counts on the charge. He was sentenced to a reprimand and forfeiture of $54,550.

He had faced a maximum punishment of dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, confinement for seven years and a possible spot in the national sex offender database.


The case marked the first time a military court had issued a verdict in a case involving an Air Force general, as well as the first time sexual assault charges had led to criminal prosecution for an official so high in the chain of command.

Because the judge did not sentence him to leave the Air Force or to jail him for at least six months, Cooley was not initially allowed to bring his case to the service’s appellate court. Instead, Air Force leadership reviewed the case to ensure it was run fairly, the spokesperson said.

Kendall would consider whether to take the unusual step of demoting Cooley, or allow him to retain his rank, once he asked to retire, the service told Air Force Times last year.

After Congress passed new legislation in December that broadened the scope of which military court cases could be appealed, Cooley lodged a complaint with the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals on April 30, the spokesperson said.

The Air Force did not immediately answer a query on the status of Cooley’s case, or whether it will continue after he retires. The appeal is separate from Kendall’s decision to demote the defendant.

Cooley was removed from command at the research lab in January 2020 after nearly three years in the job. He then became a special assistant to the head of Air Force Materiel Command, handling the Air Force’s technology innovation efforts.

His retirement ends a three-decade military career in the design and acquisition of space and missile defense systems. Cooley also briefly deployed to Afghanistan, and earned the Bronze Star, Legion of Merit and Defense Superior Service Medal.

Major General Convicted of Forcible Kissing to Retire as Colonel

30 May 2023
Military.com | By Rebecca Kheel

An Air Force two-star general who was convicted of abusive sexual contact in a court-martial last year will retire as a colonel, in a rare instance of knocking an officer down two ranks, the service announced Tuesday.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall chose to demote William Cooley, who was previously the head of the Air Force Research Laboratory, following the officer's conviction on forcibly kissing his sister-in-law, according to a statement from Air Force Materiel Command. Cooley's retirement will be effective Thursday.

"The Department of the Air Force expects its leaders to embody our core values, and holds them accountable if they fall short of expectations," the command said in the statement.

Cooley, who was accused of sexually assaulting his sister-in-law after a family barbecue in 2018, was the first Air Force general ever to face a military trial. The case was seen as a sign of a slow but sure shift away from a military culture that allowed high-ranking officers to act with impunity.

Cooley was charged with three counts of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In the April 2022 court-martial, he was convicted on only one count of abusive sexual contact related to the accusation that he forcibly kissed his sister-in-law. The two counts he was found not guilty of related to allegations that he also groped her.

A military judge sentenced Cooley to forfeit $54,550 in pay and to receive a letter of reprimand, far short of the maximum sentence of seven years' confinement and losing all pay and benefits.

Demoting Cooley to colonel means he will now get less retirement pay than he would have received as a major general, an Air Force Materiel Command spokesperson confirmed to Military.com -- a difference of tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Cooley, whose defense team maintained that the only thing that happened between him and his sister-in-law was a consensual kiss, appealed his case to the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals. The court's docket shows a hearing was scheduled for May 1.

The status of the appeal now that he is retiring is unclear. The civilian attorney who represented Cooley during his court-martial did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Tuesday.

[James1978]

Auditors: Over 1 million F-35 spare parts lost by DoD and Lockheed
By Stephen Losey
May 30, 2023

WASHINGTON — More than 1 million F-35 spare parts worth at least $85 million have gone missing over at least the last five years, according to a new Government Accountability Office report criticizing the program’s supply tracking.

Auditors said that because the government doesn’t have its own system tracking those parts, officials may not truly know how many spare parts are actually in the global spares pool, where they are, or their total value.

As a result, “the full quantity and value of these [lost] spare parts may be significantly higher” than the 1 million tally determined by the main contractor, Lockheed Martin, the document reads.

And disagreements between Defense Department offices and the main F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, over how to categorize missing parts are holding up the government’s effort to create its own reliable system to keep track of the parts, the GAO report states.

In short, the F-35 program can’t know whether contractors are properly managing spares, according to auditors, who have tracked losses going to back to 2018.

In a statement to Defense News, Lockheed Martin said the tally of spare parts listed as lost in the report cover the last two decades of the program.

Lockheed Martin said it is working with the F-35 Joint Program Office and the Defense Contract Management Agency to make sure they have the documentation needed to support disposing of components that staff judged to be “excess, obsolete or unserviceable.”

“Lockheed Martin manages F-35 spare part inventory in compliance with contract requirements,” the company told Defense News. “We continue to partner with the Joint Program Office to increase insight into spare part availability and support fleet readiness.”

The F-35′s program office said in an email to Defense News that it also agreed with GAO’s recommendations on ways to improve tracking of spare parts — but said “we know where the vast majority of F-35 spare parts are in the global supply chain.”

The Defense Department office pointed to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement rules that said programs should strive to have their recorded inventories accurate about 95% of the time, and said the F-35 program exceeds that goal.

“At this time, our error rate is around 1%,” the program office said. “While this is considered much better than the government goal of 5%, we will continue to work with the services and our industry partners to improve spare parts accountability and drive readiness for our warfighters.”

The JPO also said that F-35 spare parts are now being tracked through a non-government system, but that it is working with industry to move the data to a government system.

The international F-35 program, which includes the United States and other nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Canada, Israel, Japan and South Korea, has what GAO called a “unique” system for managing its spare parts. All participants in the program worldwide have access to a global pool of spare parts — everything from engines, tires, landing gear and support equipment down to bolts and screws — that the Defense Department owns until a part is installed on a fighter.

But while DoD owns the spare parts that all nations flying F-35s rely upon, Lockheed Martin, which builds and repairs most of the F-35′s air frame, and Pratt & Whitney, which handles the F-35′s engines, manage the global pool. Those parts are stored in more than 50 domestic and international facilities run by contractors other than Lockheed and Pratt.

Part of the problem with parts tracking lies in the Pentagon’s decision a decade ago to shift course on who owns them, GAO said. Originally, the U.S. military didn’t intend to own those parts, GAO said, but in 2012 the F-35 program issued a memo that said they belong to the U.S. government until they’re installed on a fighter.

But the Pentagon didn’t draw up a plan to maintain accountability over those F-35 parts and equipment, GAO said, as Lockheed and Pratt continued to be responsible for them and provide data on them.

Auditors also said the vast majority of lost F-35 parts don’t get adjudicated to review the circumstances behind their loss, figure out whether the government or a contractor was responsible and identify the root causes of what caused a part to go missing.

Of those 1 million lost spare parts over the last five years, Lockheed Martin submitted about 60,000 parts worth about $19 million to the JPO to be adjudicated, GAO said. The JPO finished adjudicating fewer than 20,000 missing spare parts.

Lost parts that were not reported to the JPO include 35 actuator doors worth more than $3.2 million, and 14 batteries worth more than $2.1 million, which were lost in the last three months of 2019, the report said.

A debate that has been going on since 2015 between several Pentagon offices and the two main contractors over how these parts should be categorized is also hampering efforts to better track parts. The JPO, Pratt, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, and the Defense Contract Management Agency’s aircraft propulsion office believe these spare parts should be considered government-furnished property, GAO said.

But Lockheed and DCMA’s office in Fort Worth, Texas, disagree, GAO said.

The JPO wants Lockheed Martin to report lost parts in a system called the GFP Module, which tracks government-furnished property, GAO said. The JPO said it is working with the Pentagon and Lockheed to figure out how to make that happen, considering Lockheed doesn’t consider these parts to be government-furnished property — but those talks “are in the early stages,” GAO said.

The F-35 program also has more than 19,000 parts in the global spares pool that are unusable because they are either extra, obsolete, or unserviceable, GAO said. Those parts have been sitting anywhere from a few months to five years while the site personnel have awaited instructions on how to dispose of them.

Some of these parts can be reused elsewhere within DoD, donated to other organizations such as state governments, sold as scrap, or destroyed, GAO said. But because Lockheed is not using the GFP Module to ask the JPO for instructions on what to do with these parts, it is instead informing the JPO about unusable parts on an “ad hoc” basis, the report said.

GAO auditors recommend in their report that William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, take steps to make sure all spare F-35 parts worldwide are categorized in the right way and are accountable under a contract, and update policies to make it clearer when parts are considered government-furnished property.

Auditors also said LaPlante should work with the F-35 program executive officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, to issue a process for contractors to report lost spare parts, and to make sure instructions are issued on how to get rid of excess or otherwise unusable spare parts, until those parts are entered into the GFP Module to be adjudicated or track their disposal.

[James1978]

F-35’s Block 4 upgrade 55 percent over target costs, up $1.4B since last review: GAO
A new report from the Government Accountability Office points to undocumented cost growth for new capabilities for the fighter.
By Michael Marrow
May 31, 2023

WASHINGTON — Costs for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s Block 4 modernization effort have grown 55 percent above the $10.6 billion baseline set five years ago, the Government Accountability Office reported this week — and the congressional watchdog says they lack information to determine exactly why.

“Since we last reported in April 2022, Block 4 estimated development costs increased by $1.4 billion, from $15.1 billion to a new total of $16.5 billion,” the GAO said in an expansive new report on the Joint Strike Fighter [PDF] published Tuesday. “The total increase to date is 55 percent more than what the program originally reported it would cost in 2018.”

A major driver of that cost growth, according to program officials interviewed by GAO, is the software suite’s burgeoning list of capabilities. A 2016 assessment estimated 66 capabilities for the fighter would be delivered by fiscal 2026, a number that has now risen to 80 to be delivered through FY29. Yet according to GAO, current records make it difficult to assess how much of that rising price tag stems from the addition of these capabilities compared to developmental woes for ones previously on the books.

“Program officials told us they attribute much of the Block 4 cost increases to its addition of new capabilities beyond the original Block 4 capabilities. We are unable to validate that view because the program’s cost reporting does not provide information on cost increases that occur during capability development for those original Block 4 capabilities or new capabilities added since 2018,” according to the report.

And even though the program has for years been required to submit reports to Congress on Block 4’s cost and schedule, that information is also lacking for full oversight, GAO found. If the Block 4 effort was managed as a separate program — a recommendation the GAO noted it had previously made, but was ignored on — its 55 percent cost growth would have been enough to trigger a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach, where the defense secretary would have to submit a certification to stave off a termination by Congress.

Many planned Block 4 capabilities are enabled by an upcoming hardware and software update known as Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3), which had its first flight test in January, about a year behind schedule due to delays caused by software instability, GAO said.

That test uncovered new issues, GAO found, though program officials determined the TR-3’s hardware was sufficient to support cutting it into production starting in February 2023. The first jet equipped with TR-3 is now scheduled for delivery in July, GAO said, leaving only six months between its first flight test and ensuring its software “is mature enough to be delivered to the military services.”

“An aircraft with TR-3 hardware is currently on the production line. TR-3 software is being tested and once validated will be installed on production aircraft,” F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) spokesman Russ Goemaere said in a statement. “To help with the process, the JPO has added more aircraft to the testing pool. The goal is to deliver fully validated and approved TR-3 software to our warfighters.”

The Air Force has additionally chosen to defer production of 215 F-35As, GAO stated, stretching out planned deliveries by six years from 2046 to 2052 and increasing procurement costs by $13.4 billion. The JPO didn’t not immediately respond when asked why the deliveries were deferred.

“We are currently reviewing the report and will coordinate with the F-35 Joint Program Office and our F-35 industry partners to address the GAO recommendations,” F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin said in a statement. “The F-35 remains the cornerstone of the U.S. fighter fleet, currently deterring adversaries and providing a critical advantage for the nation and its global partners.”

[James1978]

F-35 Costs Still Climbing, as Pentagon Updates the Fleet
New GAO report details another $1.4 billion in upgrade costs, and additional delays.

By Audrey Decker
May 30, 2023

The U.S. military's costliest weapons program keeps getting more expensive: upgrades for the F-35 fleet will add more than $1 billion to last year's estimates, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The Pentagon is five years into updating its fleet of F-35s, an effort known as Block 4. But the cost of the upgrades continues to climb, with an increase of $1.4 billion since GAO’s April 2022 report, bringing the total cost to $16.5 billion.

“The total increase to date is 55 percent more than what the program originally reported it would cost in 2018,” the government watchdog agency said.

And before the F-35 fleet can receive the upgrades, it needs a suite of hardware and software improvements, known as Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3. Those improvements are a year behind schedule and won’t be delivered until April 2024.

The first TR-3 flight test flew in January—an “important milestone” but one that uncovered software problems that “the contractor did not identify in software labs,” GAO said.

The new issues mean the program will have a tight timeline to complete additional tests and fix the software problems, GAO said, since TR-3 is supposed to be delivered with the first Lot 15 aircraft in July.

The F-35’s current Pratt & Whitney engine is also driving up program costs, because it’s running twice as hot as it was designed to, requiring earlier and more frequent aircraft maintenance. The extra heat could add up to $38 billion in maintenance costs to the program in the coming decades, GAO said.

However, the F-35 Joint Program Office said it is “already very confident” it can reduce the $38 billion figure by upgrading the existing Pratt engines through a program called engine core upgrade, or ECU. The Air Force recently decided that it would not pursue a new, adaptive engine for its F-35 fleet.

The Pentagon could not immediately disclose how much the upgrade would drive down the $38 billion figure.

“The ECU will restore engine life, and the [power and thermal management system] solution will ensure that the air vehicle can support future capability growth,” JPO said in a statement.

While JPO knows the current engine doesn’t have enough power, it doesn’t know how much more power it will actually need. The Pentagon isn’t sure what the “high-end margin” of power should be for the fighter, F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt said in March.

JPO has compared engine upgrade options, but “it has not fully defined the power and cooling requirements the engine and related components will need to support capabilities beyond those planned through 2035,” GAO said.

The program also continues to struggle with aircraft and engine delivery delays, GAO said.

“In 2022, Lockheed Martin delivered 50 percent of aircraft late, which represents the highest level of late deliveries over the past 6 years and three times worse than the percentage in 2021,” the office said.

As for the engines, Pratt only delivered four of 127 F135 engines on time in 2022, “even with multiyear efforts to address this long-standing issue,” GAO said.

The program had relied on a stockpile of engines, a “standing inventory of engines at government facilities,” to mitigate late deliveries, GAO said, but after an F-35B crashed in December and engine deliveries were paused because the Pentagon found a vibration in the F135 engine, the stockpile is gone and there is no longer a “buffer.”

Engine deliveries from Pratt resumed in February, and program officials told GAO they are working on a “recovery plan” to restore the stockpile.

[kdahm]

“The Department of the Air Force expects its leaders to embody our core values and holds them accountable if they fall short of expectations,” the spokesperson said.

But would an E-3, convicted of exactly the same crime, be punished with the same reprimand and fine of $54,500? Or would they be facing a BCD and jail time as the most likely end case? I doubt that a reprimand, loss of two ranks on retirement, and a bit of money is truly holding them 'accountable'.

[Belushi TD]

Here's a question about the missing spare parts.

How many of them are the bolts that were mixed up a year or two ago? We had a story posted about it, where there's certain bolts that are set up for specific jobs and are required to meet higher standards than the regular bolts, and a box of the regular bolts got mixed with the spiffy bolts, meaning they had to replace ALL those spiffy bolts to ensure the planes wouldn't fall apart.

If they're counting the spiffy bolts from that story as "lost" that could be a big chunk of them. A crate of bolts could be 10,000 items right there.

Same thing with regular bolts/washers and other small fasteners. A large number fit in a small box. A small box of washers gets dropped, breaks open, and scatters everywhere. Do you pick them up, clean them, and repackage them and return them to stores, or do you sweep them up and throw them away?

Belushi TD

[James1978]

A Closer Look At The EC-37B Compass Call, U.S. Air Force’s Future Tactical Electronic Attack Platform
June 1, 2023
Stefano D'Urso

Under the Compass Call Rehost program, the electronic attack mission is transitioning from the EC-130H to the EC-37B, with deliveries slated to begin later this year.

The U.S. Air Force is continuing the works to get its electronic attack capabilities into the future, upgrading and transitioning the Compass Call airborne tactical electronic attack weapon system from the 40 years old EC-130H to the new EC-37B. The aircraft performed its first test flight in the fully missionized configuration and USAF livery on May 4, 2023, from L3Harris’ integration and modification center in Waco, Texas.

L3Harris released a press statement to confirm this first four-hour test flight, before later removing it from its website. The few photos available from the flight and after the aircraft received its new livery were also cleaned of the USAF and unit markings, leaving only the roundels visible. In fact, uncredited sources also posted online the unedited photos, which show also the DM tail flash of the aircraft and it provisional FAA registration, which will be later replaced by the military serial.

Compass Call disrupts enemy command and control communications, radars, and navigation systems and limits adversary coordination, as part of the Counter-Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Targeting (Counter-C5ISRT) mission. Restricting an adversary’s battlespace coordination and force management, as well as suppressing the air defenses, is essential in today’s operational scenarios to improve the chances of missions’ success.

The Compass Call system is one of the busiest assets of the entire US inventory, which took part in every conflict where US troops were engaged in combat, and is also longest continuously deployed Air Force asset, being deployed since 2002 in Afghanistan. Together with the EA-18G Growler and the F-16CM Block 50/52 Fighting Falcon, Compass Call is part of the US Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) triad.

The EC-130H is operated by the 55th Electronic Combat Group (ECG) at Davis-Monthan AFB as a geographically separated unit of the 55th Wing based at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. The latter provides Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), Electronic Warfare (EW), Command and Control (C2) and national treaty verification capabilities for the U.S. forces with numerous variants of the C-135 and C-130 airframes. Once delivered, the EC-37Bs will be assigned to the 55th ECG.

The EC-130H flew for the first time in 1981 and was delivered to the Air Force a year later. The aircraft, with a crew of 13 people (four responsible for flight and navigation and nine for the EA mission equipment), has been upgraded throughout the years, but after 40 years it needs a replacement. Following the type’s retirement announced in 2014, the U.S. Air Force initiated the Compass Call Rehost program, which is moving the Compass Call suite from the EC-130H to the new EC-37B, based on the Gulfstream G550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning Aircraft (CAEW) airframe.

As for the EC-130H, BAE Systems is the contractor for the Prime Mission Equipment (PME) and L3 Communications is the contractor for aircraft integration and depot maintenance. L3 Communications and Gulfstream got a sole-source contract in 2017 to start rehosting Compass Call. The companies said the EC-37B will provide significantly improved survivability, as well as improved stand-off jamming capability and flexibility to counter sophisticated communications and radar threats.

The upgrade of the Compass Call mission system involves a number of incremental capabilities, such as BAE Systems’ Small Adaptive Bank of Electronic Resources technology. SABER is a major technological advance that will allow the Compass Call weapon system to transition from hardware to software-based electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) warfare capability. The SABER system is built on a suite of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) using an open system architecture and will provide the backbone of the new EC-37B’s operating system, also known as the “Baseline 4” iteration.

Jared Belinsky, Product Line Director of the Countermeasure & Electromagnetic Attack (CEMA) solutions at BAE, explained that the development team wanted to both achieve risk reduction for the EC-37B Baseline 4 configuration and also to provide those capabilities to the current EC-130H platform. Because of this, a Baseline 3 configuration was introduced and tested on the EC-130H to add the new capabilities to the fleet until the Baseline 4 configuration is ready.

“As our first foray into an open-system hardware and software capability for Compass Call, SABER enables the rapid insertion and integration of new technology through software updates instead of hardware reconfiguration,” said Belinsky. “They could be BAE-developed or come from 3rd-party providers, whatever the best available capability is.”

Last year, the Air Force and BAE successfully tested at Davis Monthan AFB, Arizona, three new third-party applications which were integrated on the EC-130H trough the non-proprietary SABER software development kit. The new architecture is now being used, together with the last planned hardware upgrades delivered last year, as foundation for the Baseline 4 configuration, which is expected to exponentially improve the capabilities of Compass Call.

“Using the architecture as a concept that we developed through SABER for the EC-130H, we’re now bringing that architecture forward onto Baseline 4 and the EC-37B in such a way that it extends and provides even more capability than what we were able to post on the EC-130H,” explained Belinsky. “We’re really bringing it forward in a much more extensive way, pushing the technology and capability forward and fully exploiting the advantages provided by open architectures in the EC-37B Baseline 4 system.”

For the time being there will be three configurations of Compass Call, which will be gradually brought to two with the retirement of the last EC-130Hs and then one once all EC-37Bs are delivered. This will allow to gradually introduce in service the new capabilities as they are available, without lengthening the time needed to field the new fleet.

“The current version of Compass Call that is on the EC-130Hs today is what we call the mid-Baseline 2. The interim Baseline 3 Compass Call architecture version is for the first five EC-37B aircraft. The second five aircraft will be the Baseline 4 system architecture capability,” explains Tom Huerter, Business Development Director for BAE’s CEMA business area. “So, we’re taking the opportunity to prove out the SABER technology and field it now on the EC-130H (as what we call a clip-in) which has been the way that added capability has been brought to that platform for forty years.

Considering that the EC-37B airframe has a much smaller size than the EC-130H, reducing the size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements of the prime mission equipment was a key point of the program. This was achieved thanks to the new open-system hardware and software solution that is being adopted for the EC-37B which, by the way, also resulted in a much lower cooling requirement for all onboard electronics.

Obviously, the newest Compass Call iteration must not be already obsolete when it will finally enter service, as adversaries are constantly working on new advanced layered and integrated sensing and electromagnetic warfare capabilities. To preserve the superiority in the electronic warfare spectrum, the new Compass Call needs to be up to date with the latest innovations fielded by adversaries.

“To meet the mission requirements of Compass Call, we’ve needed to be highly focused on, and up to date on our adversaries’ command, control and communications systems as well as their air defense radars, data links and navigation systems,” said Belinsky. “And so, we’ve strived throughout the life of this program, together with the Air Force, to keep pace with the emerging threats and to evolve the system along the way to continue to be relevant into the future.”

The partnership with the Air Force does not end here, as the industry is also working with the 55th ECG to prepare both infrastructures and training at Davis-Monthan AFB and at Weapons School at Nellis AFB, Nevada. Efforts are also being made to reduce the operator workload and enhance mission effectiveness, as explained by Huerter: “By optimizing the operator experience through various automated decision aids and improved Human to Machine Interface (HMI) tools, the EC-37B EWOs [Electronic Warfare Officers] will have better situational awareness and more real time targeting capability than their EC-130H predecessors.”

As a result of all the program’s efforts, the EC-37B’s operating costs will be cut in half compared to the EC-130H Compass Call, while also being able to perform its mission at higher altitudes and speed and longer ranges and durations. The G550-based aircraft will also be optimized to perform missions in Anti-Access, Area-Denial (A2/AD) environments, while also being able to be easily upgraded to face new threats thanks to its Modular Open Systems Architecture.

Even more advanced capabilities could find their way into the Compass Call’s electronics and software, as Chris O’Donnell, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Platform and Weapon Portfolio Management, said last year that the Department of Defense needs targeted investments and innovative and novel capabilities, such as cognitive EW, to keep the edge over adversaries and to counter advanced and non-traditional threats. As a matter of fact, cognitive EW capabilities are already being tested with the Angry Kitten ECM pod, so it is totally expectable that someday they will end up on the EC-37B.

So far, the U.S. Air Force has been the only operator of the Compass Call system, however this might change in future. As we reported, Italy is looking to acquire two EC-37B aircraft as part of the P-MMMS (Piattaforma Multi-Missione, Multi- Sensore/Multi-Mission, Multi-Sensor Platform) program, aimed at obtaining a modern asset that can be integrated in a net-centric C4ISTAR architecture and later adapted for multi-domain operations.

The National Armaments Directorate (which is responsible for the procurement of materiel, equipment and weapon systems for the Italian Armed Forces) determined that the only solution capable of satisfying the requirements is the EC-37B Compass Call. This will require both a Direct Commercial Sale, for the acquisition of the components and the required modifications, and a Foreign Military Sale, for the acquisition of the mission systems and the ground control stations.

Should the US Department of State approve the FMS, Italy would become the first foreign government to acquire the highly classified Compass Call system and the Italian Air Force would become one of the few operators to field a combat proven, state-of-the-art and highly effective Electronic Attack capability.

[James1978]

U.S. Air Force Has Kicked Off The B-52’s Radar Modernization Program
May 31, 2023 Military Aviation
David Cenciotti

The B-52 Radar Modernization Program has just started.

With the landing at a Boeing Co., facility in San Antonio, of a B-52 Stratofortress bomber assigned to the 307th Bomb Wing from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, the Air Force’s B-52 Radar Modernization Program has officially started: the aircraft will in fact receive the Active Electronically Scanned Array system (AESA).

“The arrival of this aircraft is a big deal, and signals the beginning of a key part of our effort to modernize the B-52 fleet,” said Col. Louis Ruscetta, Senior Materiel Leader for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s B-52 Program Office, which is leading the Radar Modernization Program, and overall effort to modernize the bomber, in a public release. “AESA will replace 1960s radar technology, and greatly increase the navigation and targeting capabilities of the B-52 in higher threat areas.”

As part of the upgrades the B-52 fleet will receive, there is also the new radar, a modified valiant of the F/A-18EF Super Hornet’s APG-79 AESA radar, that will give the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fellow) greatly improved radar range and situational awareness, while taking less space then the older mechanically scanned radar, thus leaving room for electronic warfare functions.

In addition to increased situational awareness and navigation and targeting ability, AESA is designed to be adaptable, so that new capabilities to address future threats, can be added via software modifications.

U.S. Air Force kicks off Radar Modernization for B-52 Stratofortress fleet

Published May 30, 2023
By Brian Brackens
Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Public Affairs

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- A B-52 from the 307th Bomb Wing arrived at a Boeing Co., facility in San Antonio, on May 25, to begin receiving the Active Electronically Scanned Array system (AESA), as part of the Air Force’s B-52 Radar Modernization Program.

“The arrival of this aircraft is a big deal, and signals the beginning of a key part of our effort to modernize the B-52 fleet,” said Col. Louis Ruscetta, Senior Materiel Leader for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s B-52 Program Office, which is leading the Radar Modernization Program, and overall effort to modernize the bomber. “AESA will replace 1960s radar technology, and greatly increase the navigation and targeting capabilities of the B-52 in higher threat areas.”

In addition to increased situational awareness and navigation and targeting ability, AESA is designed to be adaptable, so that new capabilities to address future threats, can be added via software modifications.

Boeing and Raytheon are both heavily involved in the installation process.

“Boeing is the OEM [original equipment manufacturer] for the B-52, so their long-standing history and knowledge of the platform is really critical to making sure we can get this [AESA] out as quickly as possible,” he said. “We are also working with Raytheon on the radar side. Overall, the partnership helps ensure we have a government off-the-shelf solution that minimizes development and helps reduce both the development and test timelines.”

Installation of AESA is one of the largest upgrades to the B-52 in the history of the fleet. The effort will cost approximately $2.8 billion, with initial operational capability expected in 2027.

“Sustainability is an important part of this effort, because the old radar is unsustainable,” said Ruscetta. “The advancement in combat capability that AESA will bring is really critical in keeping this aircraft effective with our near-peer adversaries. The new radar is an enabler for our long-range standoff capability and will prepare the aircraft for optimized lethality.”

[James1978]

Medics and Finance Personnel Repairing Runways? The Air Force Tests It Out
June 1, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Seeking to make life harder for a potential adversary like China, the Air Force wants more airfields in more locations, giving the service more freedom to operate in combat.

But runways serve little purpose if they are damaged beyond use. The Air Force recently conducted a “beta test” to figure out if Airmen without previous specialized training could repair them quickly.

“The concept of a cross-section of Airmen carrying out important wartime tasks seems like a good idea, but does it work?” the Air Force Installation and Training Support Center wrote in a press release.

So the service sought to find out, sending 25 Airmen from Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, to a training site at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Ga. to participate in an exercise May 22-24.

The Air Force has introduced the concepts of Agile Combat Employment, operating more flexibly with a smaller fixed footprint, and Multi-Capable Airmen, asking service members to perform more tasks to support those operations. The service plans to invest billions in building out infrastructure at more bases and building aircraft shelters in the Indo-Pacific, many within the likely range of Chinese missiles. It will need to ensure those facilities can recover and get back up and running as needed.

“In a deployed location, we might not be able to rely solely on civil engineers,” Master Sgt. Broc French, a training program manager with Air Force Civil Engineer Center, said in the release.

Five of the Mountain Home Airmen from the 366th Civil Engineer Squadron attended a preparation course last year. Once at Dobbins, they walked the other members of their team through the basics of rapid runway repair for two days, according to the service.

In the end, the civil engineers, along with finance, maintenance, munitions, medical, and operations support Airmen had to complete six concrete crater repairs and other runway damage operations within four hours.

“I was super nervous to come in here and start cutting concrete after two days,” said Senior Airman Kayla Panzarella, a medic at Mountain Home.

“I can’t explain the feeling of doing this wartime task, this mission,” she added. “I remember looking out from inside [of the heavy equipment] and having the feeling of, ‘Wow, we’re doing this.'”

And according to the Air Force, they did it well.

“After two days, they’ve been able to fill craters and, if it were a real-world scenario, be able to get aircraft off the ground quickly,” French said in the release. “This is a great concept that works, and we’re looking to expand it in the future.”

If the Multi-Capable Airmen concept is to succeed, more service members who are traditionally far away from the flight line will have to get their hands dirty.

“If you could take different career fields like security forces, medical, and finance like we had out here, you could put people together” in groups that can conduct complex procedures like runway repair, Master Sgt. Patrick Murphy, the instructor lead for the exercise said. “With that, you could take care of everything with a small force, as long as you had the right attitude like we had with folks this week.”

[James1978]

Pentagon leaders cancel drag show at a Nevada Air Force base

Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains
Wed, May 31, 2023

Defense Department leaders have stepped in to stop a drag show scheduled for Thursday at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, according to two defense officials and a U.S. official.

The show, which was in celebration of Pride Month, was approved by Air Force leaders, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told the Air Force it is not Pentagon policy to fund drag shows on bases and the show should be canceled or moved off base.

Drag shows and events on military bases have become a politically contentious issue in recent months, with conservative politicians and pundits arguing the military should not be spending taxpayer money on them.

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on March 29, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., angrily questioned Austin and Milley about drag queen story hours on bases around the world, including in Montana, Nevada, Virginia and Germany.

“Drag queen story hours is not something that the department funds,” Austin told the committee.

Milley chimed in, asking to see the flyers for the events Gaetz was referring to and saying he was not aware of such events and does not support their being held on military bases.

“I’d like to take a look at those, because I don’t agree with those,” Milley said.

When Milley was informed about the event this week, he was visibly angry about the decision to host the event on base, a U.S. official and a defense official said.

“Consistent with Secretary Austin’s congressional testimony, the Air Force will not host drag events at its installations or facilities. Commanders have been directed to either cancel or relocate these events to an off-base location,” an Air Force official said when asked about the Nellis event.

“Per DoD Joint Ethics Regulation (JER), certain criteria must be met for persons or organizations acting in non-Federal capacity to use DoD facilities and equipment. As Secretary Austin has said, the DOD will not host drag events at U.S. military installations or facilities. Hosting these types of events in federally funded facilities is not a suitable use of DOD resources,” deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement.

The Nellis drag show was scheduled for Thursday, but the base commander was informed in the past few days that it must either be canceled or moved off base, the officials said.

“I can confirm the Nellis commander informed the private organization that the drag event would have to be canceled or relocated to an off-base location,” a source familiar with the matter said.

Nellis AFB hosted a Pride Month drag show in June 2021, named “Drag-u-Nellis.” A spokesperson for the base said in a statement that it was intended to promote inclusivity and diversity.

On May 23, Gaetz sent a letter about the issue to Austin and Milley, detailing six other cases of drag shows or events on bases or approved by the U.S. military. Gaetz asked the Pentagon leaders to provide information about the events and to say whether any punitive action has or will be taken against anyone who used taxpayer money on them.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Defense Secretary Orders No Drag Shows on Military Bases After Political Furor

1 June 2023
Military.com | By Rebecca Kheel and Thomas Novelly

A Defense Department-wide prohibition on drag shows on military bases has resulted in the cancellation of at least two events that were planned for Pride Month and previously approved by base officials, two defense officials confirmed to Military.com.

Shows at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Ramstein Air Base in Germany scheduled for this month were canceled, participants and defense officials confirmed. The two officials told Military.com the cancellations were part of a direction from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that drag shows, which have become a target of the political right, not be hosted on bases.

The show at Nellis, the cancellation of which was first reported by NBC News, drew intense criticism from GOP politicians in recent weeks, including a letter conservative firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., sent to Austin calling the event an "outright attack on children." While a drag event at Ramstein last year faced similar attacks, the event this year had flown under the radar and the base's LGBT community had been eagerly anticipating a celebratory Pride Month.

"We're celebrating that we get to survive," Lane Fox, a member of the drag troupe that was slated to perform at a bar on Ramstein and whose partner is an active-duty service member, told Military.com on Thursday.

"The idea is that we have these public events because for the longest time we weren't able to do that because you'd get arrested and beaten and killed," Fox continued while choking up. "And now I wake up on June 1 and it's all corporate pride, and there's rainbows in every ad and then at the bottom of the rainbow is this big pot of festering lies and hate and fear."

News of the broader on-base drag ban comes as defense officials, including Austin, issue statements in support of Pride Month, the annual observance celebrating the LGBT community.

"As secretary of defense, I remain dedicated to making sure that our LGBTQ+ personnel across the joint force can continue to serve the country that we all love with dignity and pride -- this month and every other one," Austin said in a statement Thursday.

While a Defense Department spokesperson would not directly confirm Austin issued a new order banning on-base drag shows, they suggested such performances violate existing department regulations that govern on-base events hosted by private organizations.

"Per DoD Joint Ethics Regulation (JER), certain criteria must be met for persons or organizations acting in non-federal capacity to use DoD facilities and equipment," Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a statement. "As Secretary Austin has said, the DoD will not host drag events at U.S. military installations or facilities. Hosting these types of events in federally funded facilities is inconsistent with regulations regarding the use of DoD resources."

Pressed on exactly what part of the regulations drag shows violate, the department did not have an immediate response.

An Air Force official told Military.com that base leaders have been told to relocate those shows or cancel them if they're on the installation.

"Consistent with Secretary Austin's congressional testimony, the Air Force will not host drag events at its installations or facilities," the official said. "Commanders have been directed to either cancel or relocate these events to an off-base location."

During a March hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Gaetz pressed Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley about drag shows hosted on military bases. Austin repeatedly told Gaetz that such events, which are typically sponsored by community groups, are "not something that the department supports or funds."

Drag, which dates back to the Elizabethan era and has become a popular form of entertainment among the LGBT community and its allies as a celebration of self-acceptance, has become a fixation of right-wing politics. Several Republican-led states have moved to ban drag shows, including Tennessee and Florida.

In the military, drag dates back decades. The first official drag show after the end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" prohibition on gay people serving openly is believed to have been held at Kadena Air Base, Japan, in 2014. But historical records indicate drag performances to entertain the troops happened as least as far back as World War II.

Nellis, where one of this year's canceled shows was slated to happen, has hosted at least two other drag shows in past years, public affairs officials at the base told Military.com.

According to a copy of the event flyer posted online, the drag show scheduled for Thursday was supposed to take place at the Nellis Club Ballroom at 4:30 p.m. local time. It was sponsored by the Nellis LGBTQ+ Pride Council and marketed as a "family-friendly show to celebrate the legacy of Stonewall and contributions of Drag to the LGBT+ community!"

Performers Lawanda Jackson, Coco Montrese and Carne Asada were scheduled to be at the event, according to the poster.

Jackson told Military.com in a phone interview that a reporter was the one who broke the news about the cancellation on Wednesday. The drag performer is worried what precedent and message the abrupt removal of the on-base show will send to service members.

"It took a second to digest it, but I was saddened by the ripple effect this was going to cause," Jackson said. "It pushes everything back."

The LGBT community at Ramstein weathered similar criticism last year over a planned "Drag Queen Storytime" at a base library. The event was canceled as criticism started pouring in on Facebook and from lawmakers in D.C., particularly a letter Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sent Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall calling the event "completely insane."

After that incident, Ramstein's LGBT community rallied to form a nonprofit, called KMC Pride, a reference to the Kaiserslautern Military Community, to advocate for themselves and host LGBT-themed events.

The group hosted a drag show at a base bar in March, the first on-base drag event since the story time controversy, with little fanfare, though the founder of the organization told Military.com they had to assure base officials that children would not be present.

"We got a bunch of new members and they were talking about how much fun they had and how much it did mean that we had an event like this on-base and there is a group like this," Natalie Ricketts, KMC Pride's founder, told Military.com in an interview in May. "Being a brand-new, private org and being able to throw an event like that and be successful after everything that had happened, yes, that was a huge deal."

Ricketts said she founded the group after seeing the emotional and mental toll the criticism of the drag storytime took on her wife, a transgender active-duty service member. Officially, base officials maintained at the time that the library event was canceled because it didn't go through the proper approval process.

"She didn't expect to to deal with this type of discrimination on a military base overseas," Ricketts said of her wife. "Regardless of what the actual reasoning behind canceling [last year's] events was, it still looks like leadership sided with discrimination."

This year's canceled event was scheduled to take place June 17 at a base pub called the Brit Bar and was restricted to people 18 years and older. With an event again canceled this year, Fox said members of the drag troupe, called the Monarchy of RoyalTEA Drag Family, are fearful for transgender service members since drag is often conflated with being transgender.

"How do you keep fighting?" Fox said. "They said that we could do this if we got the right paperwork in order, that because this was a cultural event and celebration for a marginalized group that really all we needed to do was get our paperwork in order and then we'd be able to do it."

"How do you win when the game is rigged? How do you even play?" Fox said.

[James1978]

Air Force Reconsidering Whether Some Staff Jobs Need Pilots Amid Shortage
June 7, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

As the Air Force struggles to ease its pilot shortage, it can still fill all its cockpits, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said June 7. But that has come at the expense of staff jobs normally assigned to pilots, leading the service to reconsider whether those staff jobs actually need to be filled by rated officers, he said.

Speaking at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event, Brown said the Air Force is looking “across the entire ecosystem” of recruiting, training, and retaining pilots to find ways to close the gap in flyers, which has hovered around 1,800-2,000 for the past eight years.

“What I’ll tell you is that we are 100 percent manned in the cockpit,” Brown said. “Where we take our cuts are on the staff. So, we’re probably 70 percent manned on the staff.”

Brown said deputy chief of staff for operations Lt. Gen. James C. Slife is leading a review of staff positions, looking at those that have become designated as pilot billets to see if they actually have to be filled by rated officers.

In some cases, the position may simply require “someone who has operational experience,” Brown said.

This scrub “won’t knock this shortage to zero,” but in the Air Force, “we probably always have more requirement than we have capacity to field,” and fixing the requirement can help fix the pilot shortage, he added.

Tied to that approach, Brown said he has tried over the last two years to “ensure that all of our Airmen, to the best of our ability, have a little operational acumen.” That will make it easier to fill staff jobs with non-rated officers, he said.

In the same vein, Brown said when a staff job does require a pilot, the service is reassessing whether that pilot needs to consume flying hours while working a desk job. Normally, “you still get to fly” to retain proficiency, but “some of those you need to do, and some of those have been nice to do,” Brown noted.

More broadly, the Air Force is taking a “diverse” approach to addressing the pilot shortfall, Brown said, and is emphasizing data-driven efforts.

One such effort is the aviation bonus, which just recently was increased to $50,000 per year. Another element is streamlining and quickening the pilot training process and ensuring those accepted for pilot training don’t have to wait years to report for duty.

Other approaches focus on offering more stability and support for pilots’ families, Brown said. As an example, he cited several first-tour instructor pilots at Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas. By the usual career playbook, they would progress to another base and a major weapons platform, but they asked to stay at Laughlin because their spouses had local jobs. Brown said making those kinds of accommodations should help.

In recent years, the Air Force has also pushed to attract a more diverse swath of pilots—broadening the population from which it can draw.

“We’ve got to look at how we break some of these paradigms that we’ve had in the past, and don’t don’t do a ‘one-size-fits-all’” approach anymore, Brown said. “Each one of those helps. You’re not going to get it to zero, but it will help.”

Brown also pointed out the whole of the military is struggling with a pilot shortage, as is the commercial airline and cargo industry, and noted he has been in talks with other flying organizations to best address what he called “a national problem.”

Recruiting overall is also a struggle, as Brown acknowledged the service is likely to not achieve its goals this year. And while retention rates are high, that can lead to an unbalanced force down the road.

Brown said he has urged his commanders to open up their bases, get people out in their communities, and increase the exposure of Airmen to the general public, because the people USAF wants to attract may not know there are careers available to them in the Air Force. They cannot aspire “to something they’ve never seen,” he said.

The competition for eligible youth is “keen,” Brown noted. “They get bombarded with information.”

To stand out, the Air Force has to make personal connections, he said—digital and social media contacts are fine, but there “has to be a person on the other end” ready to answer questions and talk to recruits.

Brown also said the Air Force will experiment with different career paths, particularly in the cyber area, wherein people could be recruited to do a job and not compelled to take a leadership path after a certain period of time. As with pilots, he also said USAF has to accelerate the timeline between getting someone to agree to serve and actually getting them into uniform. A prolonged wait increases the chances of that recruit taking up another opportunity, he said.

“We have to eliminate those ‘barriers to entry,’” Brown said. “People get tired of waiting.”

[James1978]

New GAO Report: Strategic Missiles At or Below Cost, But Sentinel Faces Year Delay
June 9, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The cost of the nuclear AGM-181 Long-Range Stand Off missile has come down slightly and the program is on track, but several technologies it relies on are still considered immature, the Government Accountability Office found in a report.

Meanwhile, the GAO also assessed the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile as being on cost with all its critical technologies expected to be ready on time—yet still a year behind schedule.

The developments are noted in GAO’s 2023 Weapon Systems Annual Assessments, released June 8, which report to Congress on the status of programs across the services. The LRSO and the Sentinel—USAF’s two strategic nuclear missile modernization programs—are among 14 Air Force programs included in the report.

The GAO report’s data is current as of March, so some information may be out of date.

The LRSO, which will succeed the AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile and will be deployed on the B-52 bomber, saw a slight programmatic cost decrease since last year’s report; total predicted costs have declined from $15.1 billion in development and procurement costs to $14.9 billion, a difference of about one percent. The projected unit cost of LRSO has also come down, from an expected $13.9 million per missile to $13.75 million apiece, across an estimated purchase of 1,087 weapons.

However, GAO noted that the Air Force’s cost estimates for the nuclear missile and those of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) differ, and OSD “found procurement could cost $1.9 billion more than the Air Force estimate.”

The difference is the result of OSD using data from previous nuclear missile programs, while the Air Force used “proposed data, purchase order, and actual cost data from parts of recently-built LRSO missiles,” GAO said, apparently finding the Air Force’s numbers more convincing.

At the critical design review in February-March, OSD’s numbers were used, but the program has asked OSD to conduct another estimate in 2023, based on data from test LRSO missiles.

The GAO assessed the missile’s design as “stable.” The program started out in 2021 with what the GAO deemed “immature technologies,” and since then, two are considered mature, three are approaching maturity and one—nuclear hardness—is still considered immature. The greatest amount of immaturity in the program has to do with the nuclear warhead technologies and not the vehicle. The Department of Energy doesn’t expect to mature those elements until 2025, GAO reported. That imposes risk on the program, because starting development without demonstrating critical technologies means there could be costly work later on.

A “system-level prototype” of LRSO was tested in 2022, and the GAO said test flights of LRSO vehicles have taken place. While the Energy Department told GAO there’s a risk of an 18-month delay in warhead development, the program office will use surrogate warheads to mitigate any delays, the audit agency said.

“The Air Force plans to demonstrate missile-critical manufacturing processes on a pilot production line prior to the production decision in 2027,” GAO said. “Our prior work found this testing provides decision makers confidence that the contractor can meet quality, cost, and schedule goals.

Responding to the GAO, the program office said “LRSO development is on track for on-time fielding.”

The next big milestone for LRSO will be the low-rate production decision in mid-2027. Operational testing is slated to be complete by the end of calendar 2028 and the go-ahead for full-rate production is planned for early 2029. The Air Force won’t reveal the planned initial operational capability date due to classification, GAO said.

Sentinel

The Sentinel program, while still on cost, is seeing about a year’s delay, the GAO said. According to the program timeline accompanying the new report’s entry on Sentinel, initial operational capability is now expected between April and June 2030, about a year later than previous estimates, and skating close to the no-fail IOC of September 2030 required by U.S. Strategic Command.

“Sentinel is behind schedule due to staffing shortfalls, delays with clearance processing, and classified information technology infrastructure challenges,” the GAO said. “Additionally, the program is experiencing supply chain disruptions, leading to further schedule delays.”

In fact, the program’s master schedule contains “many deficiencies” and can’t be used to effectively manage the program, the GAO said, adding that contractor Northrop Grumman is reviewing the schedule and discussing how it may be changed.

The GAO also chalked up some delay to cybersecurity risk reduction activities. Cybersecurity requirements have been delayed pending the maturation of program requirements and “architecture models,” the GAO said, “resulting in schedule delays and cost growth.”

The program, which GAO called “complex,” will replace the Minuteman III ICBM as well as missile silos and the command-and-control system undergirding it. All that is estimated to cost $85.1 billion, including development, manufacture, and construction, the GAO said, noting that this estimate—dated January 2023—is exactly the same as the baseline estimate in September 2020.

The GAO said that of Sentinel’s 18 critical technologies, three are mature, 14 are approaching maturity and just one is immature, but the program expects to get all of those up to maturity before production begins in 2026.

The program has “successfully completed developmental tests of the new rocket motor and other missile components,” GAO said.

Although the digital approach taken to Sentinel’s design has been highly lauded by members of Congress and the DOD—praising the fact that it evaluated millions of alternatives before settling on an optimum configuration—GAO said the digital engineering environment for the program remains incomplete.

The environment “enables the digital integration of program’s data, tools, and model-based systems engineering activities to accelerate design and analysis,” but the fact that it’s still incomplete “is adding risk to Sentinel’s schedule, including major milestones such as system-level critical design review and first flight, both planned for fiscal year 2024.” The GAO said the digital environment was expected to reach IOC by the second quarter of fiscal 2023.

Critical design review is set for April-June 2024, with low-rate production expected exactly two years later. Operational testing will conclude in the fall of 2029, with IOC in mid-2030, and full-rate production later that year. The Air Force plans to buy 659 Sentinels, accounting for silo-deployed missiles and test units.

The program office pointed out to GAO that “Sentinel is a total system replacement of the intercontinental ballistic missile system’s 400 missiles, 450 silos, and more than 600 facilities over a 31,900 square-mile landmass. … Sentinel is one of the top priorities within the Department of Defense, and the program has the attention and focus of the department’s senior leadership.”

[James1978]

New ICBM Delayed at Least a Year, GAO Says
Annual assessment foresees LGM-35A reaching initial operating capability no earlier than mid-2030.

By Audrey Decker
June 8, 2023

The Air Force’s next intercontinental ballistic missile will arrive at least a year behind schedule, according to the Government Accountability Office’s annual evaluation of Pentagon weapons programs.

“Initial capability” for the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM is now slated for April to June 2030, the report says—a year later than the May 2029 date given in the Pentagon’s most recent Selected Acquisition Report.

“Sentinel is behind schedule due to staffing shortfalls, delays with clearance processing, and classified information technology infrastructure challenges. Additionally, the program is experiencing supply chain disruptions, leading to further schedule delays. The prime contractor is working on multiple supply chain mitigations to address the issue,” GAO said.

The contractor, Northrop Grumman, is discussing the “potential changes” to the schedule with the Pentagon, GAO said.

Air Force leaders hinted at possible delays to the ICBM program earlier this year. Keeping the effort on schedule will be a “challenge,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Congress at the end of April, because it’s a “very complicated, very large program.”

Indeed, it requires a “total system replacement of the intercontinental ballistic missile system’s 400 missiles, 450 silos, and more than 600 facilities over a 31,900 square-mile landmass,” GAO said.

The program told GAO that the Air Force is “actively working to address current and potential future macroeconomic pressures via an updated acquisition strategy.”

However, the missile’s first flight test is still on track for this year, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said Wednesday at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“We're continuing to work very closely with our industry partner on driving down any type of risk getting to that first flight, but also just over the long term, as well,” Brown said.

The ICBM replacement has also been criticized for its hefty price tag, which could exceed a quarter-trillion dollars.

It’s almost impossible for the ICBM replacement not to be delayed or go over budget, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, previously told Defense One. Beyond LGM-35A, the entire nuclear enterprise is facing delays, he said.

ICBMs have become a controversial leg of the nuclear triad because the silo-based missiles are more easily targeted than U.S. bombers or submarines, turning large swathes of the Midwest into a “missile sponge.” The president would face a use-them-or-lose-them choice within minutes of a reported attack—which critics say boosts the chance of accidental nuclear war.

But some defense officials and lawmakers—including the former head of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. Charles Richardson—say ICBMs remain crucial.

[James1978]

ICBM Cancer Study Will Include ‘Enduring’ Environmental Monitoring
May 31, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

As part of its broad study of cancer risks at the intercontinental ballistic missile bases, the Air Force is conducting a more focused, detailed investigation of environmental hazards at the installations.

“Two separate efforts are planned in the future,” Col. Tory W. Woodard, the director of the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM), which designed the study, recently told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The first is an epidemiology study to look at cancer rates in missileer and associated career fields. The second, he added, is “dedicated environmental hazard sampling to assess the work areas.”

Concern about cancer rates at ICBM bases from the veteran community spurred the Air Force to launch its much-scrutinized Missile Community Cancer Study.

Members of the study team conducted initial visits to the ICBM bases in February and March to understand what they should look for and where. The Air Force’s three ICBM bases are Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., and Minot Air Force Base, N.D. The ICBM silos themselves are spread out over vast fields that reach into five states.

The Air Force has studied the issue before, including a study in 2001 at Malmstrom. This time, the service is planning a more exhaustive look.

There is an improved understanding of the environment and factors that can affect the issue, as well as better technology and “access both to personnel and to the actual silos and launch facilities and launch control centers,” Col. Robert Peltzer, a senior medical official at Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a recent interview. “I don’t think the 2001 folks had that same level of ability to get to the spots that they really need to look at.”

The issue is not just a concern for veterans. The service is also trying to understand the potential hazards for personnel currently stationed at the facility.

“When they got back, they looked at, OK, here’s all the hazards we identified,” Peltzer said of the initial visits. “Let’s research and find out what equipment is out there today that can detect these things.”

Among the potential dangers, the study teams found stickers indicating the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls—commonly known as PCBs—which are present in older electronics and should have been removed long ago.

“PCBs have been demonstrated to cause a variety of adverse health effects,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which notes “the data strongly suggest that PCBs are probable human carcinogens.”

PCB production was banned in 1979, but ICBM facilities are decades old. An AFGSC source familiar with the study said the Air Force began phasing out PCBs at ICBM facilities in the 1980s, but it is not clear if the process was fully completed. The person said technical orders were issued for the removal of PCBs which were marked as complete, and technical orders might not have included removing the signage. But signs denoting the presence of PCBs are present at all three active ICBM bases and the Air Force is investigating.

“We’re not going to take that the stickers are inaccurate or accurate,” Peltzer said. “We’re going to make sure and validate one way or the other—are there PCBs down there?”

PCBs are not the only hazard. Another major concern for missileers is radon exposure and water contamination. Radon is a radioactive gas that comes from bedrock and soil, and missile facilities are buried underground with personnel living in cramped quarters on 24-48 hour shifts.

“There’ll be looking for air sampling, air intake, water—both above ground and below ground,” Peltzer said.

The U.S. government does not own the land around many missile facilities where some harmful materials may be present.

“We’re going to test the water and soil at different times for environmental changes,” Peltzer said, noting the schedule for doing agriculture work, as well as temperature changes, could affect the level of risk.

The team will also keep sampling equipment, which had to get special clearance to be used in ICBM facilities, on the bases to continue monitoring well into the future.

That’s in keeping with researchers comprehensive approach of “doing it, training, and then setting up the long-term enduring part of this to make sure that we don’t have anything in the future that we weren’t aware of,” Peltzer said.

He said the Air Force would not let the classified nature of ICBM operations impede the investigation.

“One of the things that we’ve ensured is that our environmental folks do have the level of clearance to go down in those areas,” Peltzer said. “They don’t have the need to know what the rest of the stuff is going on. But they can collect information or take samples and then leave. So those are things that have changed over the years.”

[MikeKozlowski]

As with pilots, he also said USAF has to accelerate the timeline between getting someone to agree to serve and actually getting them into uniform. A prolonged wait increases the chances of that recruit taking up another opportunity, he said.

“We have to eliminate those ‘barriers to entry,’” Brown said. “People get tired of waiting.”

We knew that shit thirty years ago, Sir. Start again.

Mike

[jemhouston]

As with pilots, he also said USAF has to accelerate the timeline between getting someone to agree to serve and actually getting them into uniform. A prolonged wait increases the chances of that recruit taking up another opportunity, he said.

“We have to eliminate those ‘barriers to entry,’” Brown said. “People get tired of waiting.”

We knew that shit thirty years ago, Sir. Start again.

Mike

Don't we also know that pilots want to fly aircraft and not desk?