Once again, the annual U.S. Air Force Association (AFA) Air & Space Conference in Washington was overshadowed by the failure of the Congress to approve the President’s federal budget request. With only two weeks until the start of Fiscal Year 2016, attendees heard pleas from their leadership for the legislators to cast aside their debilitating political differences. However, the Hill is likely to pass a continuing resolution (CR) rather than the FY2016 budget. This means that most defense programs can be funded only at previously approved levels, and new program starts will be inhibited. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James described the effect of a long-term CR as “even worse than sequestration.”
The new starts in FY2016 include the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B), for which source selection was promised “soon.” Almost nothing about this classified program has been revealed—except to the Washington think tanks in a recent briefing. Specialist defense journalists attending the conference roundly criticized Air Force leadership for excluding them from this event. The LRS-B is part of the "Holy Trinity" of Air Force acquisitions—the others being the F-35 and the KC-46. Various officials reported progress toward the initial operating capability of the F-35A, which is due on August 1 next year. The development problems of the KC-46 were also aired. Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh described the urgent need to replace JSTARS and port the vital but unsung EC-130 capability to other platforms. The new T-X trainer should be in service by 2024, he added, and the service will begin building a plan to replace the E-3 AWACS this year.
There were few formal media briefings by industry. But Lockheed Martin (LM) described its Skunk Works concept for a new high-altitude ISR jet labeled TR-X, which caught Air Force officials by surprise. They were less surprised to hear the company pitch for the retention of the U-2 Dragon Lady beyond its planned retirement in 2020. LM says that the U-2 and the Global Hawk UAV are complementary. Northrop Grumman cancelled a planned media briefing on its Universal Payload Adapter (UPA), which is designed to integrate additional sensors onto the UAV, notably the U-2’s superior SYERS and OBC imaging sensors. But AIN has learned that the Air Force would prefer to integrate another high-end imaging sensor on the UAV instead—the MS-177 that is made by the same company as SYERS and the OBC, namely UTC Aerospace Systems.
AFA traditionally features presentations by most three- and four-star Air Force commanders. Welsh noted that the service is entering its 24th consecutive year of combat operations. The commander of United States Air Forces in Europe, Gen. Stan Gorenc, had some interesting things to say about the Russian threat. Air Combat Command chief Gen. "Hawk" Carlisle described new rapid deployment concepts “to places and at times that people don’t expect,” such as the recent flights of the F-22 out of an airbase in Estonia. He also revealed that the Air Force Special Operations Command will soon field directed energy weapons , even though “nobody really understands what the lightning bolt actually does.” Pacific Air Forces chief Gen. Lori Robinson described partnerships with the many countries in her region, and gathered the air force chiefs of nine of them with her on the stage.
There was also plenty of discussion (and some hand-wringing) about how to tap the brain-power of Silicon Valley and high-technology from elsewhere in the U.S., especially that of forward-leaning smaller companies, most of which are unwilling to engage with the Defense Department’s cumbersome acquisition bureaucracy. Various engagement initiatives were described, such as Bending The Cost Curve, PlugFestPlus and Matchmaker. Acquisition officials said they are extending the “should cost” approach of incentives and penalties in contracts to some “should schedule” pilot projects, including MS-177, a GPS/INS modernization program, and the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System.
Calling for “strategic agility,” Secretary James said, “We have to adapt faster than our adversaries in all that we do.” The Air Force this week published a Future Operating Concept that describes the integration of multi-domain operations: cyber (warfare), space and air. There was some interesting discussion at the conference about the difference and the boundaries between cyber and electronic warfare. “Cyber offense is fun, but it can be quite fragile. Defense is hard,” said top Air Force acquisition official Dr. William LaPlante. Three years ago, cyber capability “was [only] a powerpoint slide” said Gen Welsh. LaPlante noted the difficulty of predicting and determining the effect of offensive cyber; for presentational reasons, it seems, most American defense officials are reluctant to describe "cyber" as "warfare."
