Latest news with #2025WarfareSymposium
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Space Force Chief 'Enamored By Systems That Deny, Disrupt, And Degrade' Satellites
The U.S. Space Force's top officer has provided an unusually detailed description of a vision for future counter-space capabilities and priorities in that regard — as well as the kinds of threats that the service faces. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman's comments came during the Air & Space Forces Association's 2025 Warfare Symposium last week. Saltzman began by categorizing the types of adversary weapons that the United States might expect to encounter in space. These are broken down into six broad categories, three that are space-based and three that are ground-based, but with the same threats in each set. In each of those domains, the three broad threats are directed-energy weapons, such as lasers, radio-frequency capabilities, including electronic warfare jamming, and kinetic threats, which attempt to destroy a target physically. The latter category includes 'killer satellites' positioned in orbit. As TWZ has explained in the past: 'A killer satellite able to maneuver close to its target could use various means to try to disable, damage, or even destroy it, such as jammers, directed energy weapons, robotic arms, chemical sprays, and small projectiles. It could even deliberately smash into the other satellite in a kinetic attack.' 'We're seeing in our adversary developmental capabilities that they're pursuing all of those,' Saltzman said. As for the United States, 'we're not pursuing all of those yet,' Saltzman admitted, although he noted that there are 'good reasons to have all those categories.'In particular, a broad range of capabilities is required to potentially counter a proliferation of satellites across low-Earth orbit, as well as in medium/high geo-synchronous orbit. These different challenges, Saltzman observed, 'require different kinds of capabilities. That which is effective in low-Earth orbit is less effective in GEO and vice versa.' In terms of the kind of threats that the United States and its allies now have to deal with in space, Saltzman considers that the most concerning aspect 'is the mix of weapons … they are pursuing the broadest mix of weapons, which means they're going to hold a vast array of targets at risk.' In this context, Saltzman identifies China as the most dangerous adversary, although Russia is also working on similar capabilities. Back in 2021, Gen. David Thompson, at that time the Space Force's second in command, pointed out that China and Russia were already launching 'reversible attacks,' meaning ones that don't permanently damage the satellites. These attacks include jamming, temporarily blinding optics with lasers, and cyber-attacks, and they target U.S. satellites 'every single day.' Thompson also disclosed that a small Russian satellite used to conduct an on-orbit anti-satellite weapon test back in 2019 had at one point approached so close to a U.S. satellite that there were fears an actual attack was imminent. Even before then, U.S. satellites were coming under 'reversible attack.' In 2006, for example, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) confirmed that a U.S. spy satellite had been 'illuminated' by a ground-based Chinese laser. On that occasion, it was a test with no impact on the satellite's intelligence-gathering capabilities. Since then, however, there has been an uptick in these kinds of attacks, underscoring the rapid development and fielding by Russia and China of a wide variety of anti-satellite capabilities. As for non-reversible attacks, details in this regard are few and far between. In the past, when U.S. officials have been asked to confirm or deny whether any American satellites have actually been damaged in a Russian or Chinese attack, this information has been withheld as classified. Nevertheless, with these various threats in mind, 'the focus out of the gate has been on the resiliency of our architecture, to make the targeting as hard on the adversary as possible,' Saltzman said last week. 'If you can disaggregate your missions from few satellites to many satellites, you change the targeting [requirements]. If you can make things maneuverable, it's harder to target, and so that is an initial effort that we've invested heavily over the last few years to make us more resilient against those broad categories.' As well as efforts to field 'many satellites,' the U.S. military has been looking to develop and field new and improved space-based capabilities, as well as explore new concepts, such as distributed constellations of smaller satellites and ways to rapidly deploy new systems into orbit, to help reduce vulnerabilities to anti-satellite attacks, in general. This kind of resilience is only becoming more critical as the United States and its allies increasingly rely on space-based assets for vital capabilities, including early warning, intelligence-gathering, navigation and weapon guidance, communications and data-sharing, to name just a few. Of course, while Saltzman's broad description of these six types of threats was framed around building resilience in space, the very same capabilities can be used, in turn, by the United States against its adversaries. Typically, Space Force officials are extremely tight-lipped about these so-called 'counter-space' capabilities. 'In the military setting, you don't say, 'Hey, here's all the weapons and here's how I'm going to use them, so get ready.' That's not to our advantage,' Saltzman said. While unable to talk specifics, The Space Force's top officer did approach the topic more generally. 'I am far more enamored by systems that deny, disrupt, and degrade,' he said, as opposed to ones that destroy. 'I think there's a lot of room to leverage systems focused on those D-words, if you will.' Saltzman pointed out that although systems that 'destroy' come at a cost in terms of debris, 'we may get pushed into a corner where we need to execute some of those options.' Mainly, however, Saltzman's Space Force is 'really focused on the weapons that deny, disrupt, and degrade. Those can have tremendous mission impacts with far less degradation, in a way that could affect blue systems. That's just one of the things about the space environment. I tell my air-breathing friends all the time, when you shoot an airplane down, it falls out of your domain.' For the Space Force, using a weapon to destroy a target in space can lead to its own systems being threatened by debris. Saltzman pointed to the examples of the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test and another by Russia in 2021 as 'still causing problems' in terms of hazardous debris. The 2021 Russian anti-satellite weapon test, in particular, involving a ground-launched interceptor, led to widespread condemnation, including from the U.S. government, and prompted renewed discussion about potential future conflicts in is not the first time that a Space Force or Air Force senior officer has alluded to these kinds of capabilities, but such instances are vanishingly rare. 'There may come a point where we demonstrate some of our capabilities so that our adversaries understand they cannot deny us the use of space without consequence,' then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said back in 2019. 'That capability needs to be one that's understood by your adversary,' she added. 'They need to know there are certain things we can do, at least at some broad level, and the final element of deterrence is uncertainty. How confident are they that they know everything we can do? Because there's a risk calculation in the mind of an adversary.' It's worth noting, too, that the Biden administration vowed to halt U.S. destructive direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons testing back in 2022, raising concerns about America's ability to target enemy satellites, something you can read more about here. In recent years, American officials have increasingly pointed to the policy and other problems caused by the extreme secrecy that surrounds U.S. military activities, as well as those conducted by the U.S. Intelligence Community, outside the Earth's atmosphere. Barbara Barrett, Wilson's successor as Secretary of the Air Force, previously argued that 'The lack of an understanding really does hurt us in doing things that we need to do in space.' Meanwhile, the challenges the U.S. military and the rest of the U.S. government face in deterring hostile actors or actually responding to acts of aggression in space are by now fairly well established, although specific details remain scarce. Even more secretive are the kinds of capabilities that the United States is able to employ, in turn, to 'deny, disrupt, and degrade' — and even destroy — the systems of its adversaries. While Saltzman wasn't able to provide anything in the way of specifics, his comments may well reflect a growing openness to address these issues in the public arena. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
This Is How The Military Wants AI To Help Control America's Nuclear Arsenal
While it has long been a world-ending threat in science fiction, U.S. Air Force and Space Force officials see artificial intelligence (AI) playing important, if not critical roles in the command and control enterprise at the heart of America's nuclear deterrent capabilities. AI has the potential to help speed up decision making cycles and ensure that orders get where they need to go as fast and securely as possible. It could also be used to assist personnel charged with other duties from intelligence processing to managing maintenance and logistics. The same officials stress that humans will always need to be in or at least on the loop, and that a machine alone will never be in a position to decide to employ nuclear weapons. A group of officers from the Air Force and Space Force talked about how AI could be used to support what is formally called the Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) architecture during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association's 2025 Warfare Symposium, at which TWZ was in attendance. The current NC3 enterprise consists of a wide array of communications and other systems on the surface, in the air, and in space designed to ensure that a U.S. nuclear strike can be carried out at any time regardless of the circumstances. 'If we don't think about AI, and we don't consider AI, then we're going to lose, and I'm not interested in losing,' Maj. Gen. Ty Neuman, Director of Strategic Plans, Programs and Requirements at Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), said yesterday. 'So we absolutely have to figure this out.' 'AI has to be part of what the next generation NC3 [architecture] is going to look like. We have to be smart about how we use that technology,' Neuman continued. 'Certainly the speed is probably the most critical thing. There's going to be so much data out there, and with digital architectures, resilient architectures, and things like that, we have to take advantage of the speed at which we can process data.' Neuman also outlined a role for AI to help with secure communications. 'The way I would envision this actually being in the comm world, would be using AI to – if a message is being sent or a communication is being sent from the National Command Authority to a shooter, AI should be able to determine what is the fastest and most secure pathway for me to get that message from the decision maker to the shooter,' the general explained. 'As a human operator on a comm system in today's world, I will not have the ability to determine what is the most secure and safest pathway, because there's going to be, you know, signals going in 100 different directions. Some may be compromised. Some may not be compromised. I will not be able to determine that, so AI has to be part of that.' The National Command Authority is the mechanism through which the President of the United States would order a nuclear strike, a process you can read more about in detail here. America's currently has a nuclear triad of 'shooters' consisting of B-2 and B-52 bombers, silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and Ohio class ballistic missile submarines. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle combat jets, as well as at least some F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and F-16 Viper fighters, can also carry B61 tactical nuclear bombs. AI could be valuable in the NC3 enterprise beyond helping with decision making and communications, as well. 'We can analyze historical data and identify trends, and those AI tools could be used in a predictive manner. We could use it on our systems to proactively manage just like our system maintenance, be able to plan the upgrades to the system, and reducing the risks to unexpected interruptions or disruptions,' Space Force Col. Rose, Deputy Director for Military Communications and Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) at Space Systems Command, another one of the panelists, said. 'Additionally, the data or trends related to cybersecurity, or being able to see what our adversaries are up to, could also be useful for decision makers.' Though made just in passing, Rose's comment about cybersecurity offers a notable point about how AI could be useful for helping to defend networks like the NC3 architecture, both within the cyber domain and across the radiofrequency (RF) spectrum. The nuclear decision-making space has always been one with short timetables, including when it comes to securely disseminating nuclear strike orders. For decades now, it has been understood that the President will have at best tens of minutes, if not substantially less, to explore available courses of action and pick one or more to execute once an incoming nuclear threat has been spotted and positively identified. Many of those courses of action would only be viable within certain time windows and any disruption in the decision-making process would have devastating consequences. There are also already efforts to integrate AI-driven capabilities into other decision-making spaces, including at the tactical level, across the Department of Defense. AI tools are already being used to help monitor domestic airspace and processing intelligence, as well as assist with maintenance, logistics, and other sustainment-related functions. At the same time, there have been concerns about the accuracy of the models that underpin existing AI-driven capabilities and the idea of automating anything to do with nuclear weapons is particularly sensitive. Science fiction and other ends of popular culture are also full of stories where turning over aspects of America's nuclear deterrent arsenal to a machine leads an apocalypse or risks doing so. The 1983 movie WarGames and the Terminator franchise – starting with the eponymous film in 1984, but better emphasized by the opening scene to the 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day 2 – are prime examples. The panelists yesterday acknowledged the concerns about integrating AI into the NC3 architecture specifically. 'When we think about nuclear enterprise and our nuclear capabilities, as well as the assured comm[unications] that we absolutely have to have, we have to have a human in the loop. As good as AI is, as good as computer process and things like that could be, it's really only as good as the data that is fed into it,' Maj. Gen. Neuman said. 'Therefore, if the data is corrupted, then we have no way of actually determining whether the data or the output is actually there. So, therefore, we absolutely have to have the human in the loop there.' 'The human, the loop should really just be, you know, there to inform and make sure that the data that's being transmitted is exactly right,' he also said. 'I think it's important to push the boundaries of AI, and deliver innovative solutions that are reliable and trustworthy, but I also recognize that the integration of AI, specifically in NC3 systems, presents some challenges and risks,' Col. Rose added. 'I think that with robust testing, validation, and implementing oversight mechanisms, I think we can find a way to mitigate some of those risks and challenges, and ultimately deliver AI systems that operate as they're intended.' 'I would just foot stomp to those people that are maybe not as familiar with this mission space: while we do need everything we just talked about, there will always be a human making the decision on whether to employ this weapon, and that human will be the President United States,' Air Force Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, who was also on yesterday's panel, stressed. 'So for those of you that are concerned out there, don't be concerned about that. There will always be that human in the loop.' It is worth noting that yesterday's panel was hardly the first time U.S. military officials have publicly advocated for integrating AI into nuclear operations. 'We are also developing artificial intelligence or AI-enabled human-led decision support tools to ensure our leaders are able to respond to complex, time-sensitive scenarios,' Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command (STRACOM), said in a keynote address at the 2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System worldwide conference last October. 'By processing vast amounts of data, providing actionable insights and enabling better informed and more timely decisions, AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities, but we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us. Advanced systems can inform us faster and more efficiently, but we must always maintain a human decision in the loop.' Cotton elaborated further on this during a talk the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank hosted in November 2024. 'If we think that United States Strategic Command can't take advantage of artificial intelligence to preserve the terabytes of data that would otherwise hit the floor, and still do things the old fashioned way, as far as, not decision making, but planning efforts, efficiencies, then we might as well … move out of the beautiful building we have and just go into something that has rotary phones,' he said. 'I [would] much rather have an opportunity, if asked for the, you know, by the President – for example, the President says, 'well, here's what I want you to do' – I [would] much rather say, 'well, Mr. President, hold on. I'll get back to you in a couple of hours, and we'll talk about how we can execute that',' Cotton continued. 'You know, it would be much nicer for me to be able to kind of go, 'Yes, Mr. President, give me a couple of minutes, and we'll come back to you with some options.' That's what I'm talking about, right?' 'You know, in WarGames, it has this machine called the WOPR [War Operation Plan Response, pronounced 'whopper']. So, the WOPR actually was that AI machine that everyone is scared about. And guess what? We do not have, you know, a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters. Nor would we ever have a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters,' Cotton added. 'That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is, how do I, you know, how do I get and become efficient on ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] products, you know? How do I get, you know, efficient on understanding what's the status of my forces? You know, those are things that AI and machine learning can absolutely help us and really shave a lot of time off on being able to do those type of things.' Whether or not the assurances like this, or those from Gebara, Neuman, and Rose yesterday, about a human always being in the loop will allay concerns about the use of AI in the NC3 architecture remains to be seen. What is clear is that this discussion is not going away any time soon. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
USAF Generals Downplay Calls For More Hardened Aircraft Shelters In Pacific Theater
U.S. Air Force officials remain focused on the ability to disperse forces to far-flung operating locations as the primary means of reducing vulnerability to enemy attacks. They also continue to downplay any talk of doing more to physically harden existing bases. This is despite acknowledgments that large established facilities are still expected to play key roles in any future conflict and can no longer be considered sanctuaries. All of this comes amid an increasingly heated debate about whether the entire U.S. military should be investing in new hardened aircraft shelters and other similar infrastructure improvements, which TWZ has been following closely. Air Force Gen. Kevin Schneider, head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), the service's top command in the Indo-Pacific region, spoke yesterday about current 'resilient' basing priorities during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium, at which TWZ was in attendance. The panel's main topic was Agile Combat Employment (ACE), a term that currently refers to a set of concepts for distributed and disaggregated operations centered heavily on short notice and otherwise irregular deployments, often to remote, austere, or otherwise non-traditional locales. The other branches of the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Marine Corps, have been developing similar new concepts of operations. 'So the Air Force wants to populate the Indo-Pacific with dispersed operating locations to support ACE. However, the Air Force also needs to invest heavily in resilient infrastructure at its main operating bases,' Heather 'Lucky' Penney, the panel's moderator, said as a lead in to a question. 'So, General Schneider, could you speak to what the Air Force is doing to balance the demand for resilient infrastructure while also building out ACE operating locations across the Indo-Pacific?' Penney is currently a senior fellow at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and also an Air Force veteran who flew F-16s. 'It's different in the Indo-Pacific than it is in Europe. [We] do not have NATO. You have a couple of – five bilateral treaty partners. Two of them are Korea and Japan where we share basing,' Schneider said in response. 'We also have the joint force demands on our bases. And their are benefits to that, as well. I like having the Army on our bases, especially when they have Patriots [surface-to-air missile systems] and other capability that helps us defend.' It's worth noting here that currently the U.S. Army is the lead service for providing air and missile defense for Air Force bases at home and abroad. There has been talk recently about the Air Force potentially taking a greater role in this regard. The Army has been facing its own struggles in meeting growing demand for ground-based air and missile defenses. 'So, we will have the need for bases, the main operating bases from which we operate,' the PACAF commander continued. 'The challenge becomes, at some point, we will need to move to austere locations. We will need to disaggregate the force. We will need to operate out of other locations, again, one for survivability, and two, again, to provide response options.' Ensuring the continued viability of main operating bases and work related to ACE both 'cost money,' he said. The Air Force is then faced with the need to 'make internal trades' funding-wise, such as 'do we put that dollar towards, you know, fixing the infrastructure at Kadena [Air Base in Japan] or do we put that dollar towards restoring an airfield at Tinian,' according to Schneider. What Gen. Schneider was referring to at the end here is the massive amount of work that has been done to reclaim North Field on the island of Tinian, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, since the end of 2023. North Field was originally built as a huge B-29 bomber base during World War II. It was the biggest active airbase anywhere in the world before being largely abandoned after the war ended. There has also been additional expansion of the available facilities at Tinian International Airport in recent years, ostensibly to improve its ability to serve as a divert location for U.S. military aircraft in the event that the critically strategic Andersen Air Force Base on nearby Guam is rendered unusable for any reason. North Field is a prime example of the Air Force's current focus on ACE as the centerpiece of how it expects to fight in the future, especially in a high-end fight in the Pacific. The airfield's grid-like layout inherently presents additional targeting challenges for a potential adversary like China, as you can read about in more detail in TWZ's recent story on what has been happening over the past year or so on Tinian. Guam has also seen significant military construction work in recent years, including to refurbish more of the World War II-era Northwest Field on the island to support ACE operations. Guam is now set to get a huge new air and missile defense architecture full of new surface-to-air missile launchers, radars, and other supporting facilities, as you can read more about here. 'These are the things that we need in our main operating bases. These are the things that we need to project power,' Gen. Schneider added, but did not explicitly mention hardened infrastructure. He also emphasized a desire to work more with regional allies and partners to 'gain greater access to those fields that are already in operating condition.' Air Force Gen. James Hecker, another member of yesterday's ACE panel at the AFA Warfare Symposium, also stressed the continued importance of existing main operating bases. Hecker, who is head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA), as well as NATO's Allied Air Command, highlighted significant challenges his service faces in successfully executing large-scale dispersed operations in the future, as well. 'I have the opportunity to talk to the Ukrainian air chief once every two weeks, or so. And they've been very successful not getting their aircraft hit on the ground,' Hecker said. 'And I ask him, I said, 'How is that? What do you do?' And he goes, 'Well, we never take off and land at the same airfield. I'm like, okay, you know, that's pretty good. Keeps the Russians on their toes.' 'I got tons of airfields from tons of allies, and we have access to all of them. The problem is, I can only protect a few of them,' he continued. 'We can't have that layered [defensive] effect for thousands of airbases. There's just no way it's going to happen.' However, Gen. Hecker warned that just dispersing forces to more bases will not be a solution in of itself, either. 'So, to go think you're going to land at another airfield and hang out there for a week with no defense, you're going to get schwacked. It's going to happen,' he said. 'You can only stay there for a little bit, and then you've got to get back to your main operating bases.' 'It's going to be much shorter operations. You know, we're not talking weeks anymore,' Hecker explained. 'We're talking days, and sometimes we're talking hours, if you want to be survivable. And then back at your main operating base, you've got the layered defense.' Hecker called attention to how shrinking adversary kill chains are a key driving factor here, specifically highlighting Russia's efforts to reduce the total time it takes to complete a targeting cycle in operations in Ukraine. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been doing the same, particularly with the help of a growing array of space-based surveillance assets. The time it takes from certain munitions like ballistic and hypersonic missiles to actually get to their targets after launch can also be very short. 'So it's really evolving the ACE concept,' the Air Force's top officer in Europe noted. Realities like the ones Hecker outlined are exactly what has been driving increasing criticism of the Air Force's current focus on ACE, as well as the service's general approach to basing and base defense, including from members of Congress and outside experts. Just in January, the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., published a report warning that a lack of hardened and unhardened aircraft shelters, as well as other exposed infrastructure, at bases across the Pacific and elsewhere globally has left the U.S. military worryingly vulnerable. The report's authors assessed that just 10 missiles with warheads capable of scattering cluster munitions across areas 450 feet in diameter could be sufficient to neutralize all aircraft parked in the open and critical fuel storage facilities at key airbases like Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Another report that the Henry L. Stimson Center think tank published last December highlighted how Chinese missile strikes aimed just at cratering runways at bases in the Pacific could upend the U.S. military's ability to project airpower. 'While 'active defenses' such as air and missile defense systems are an important part of base and force protection, their high cost and limited numbers mean the U.S. will not be able to deploy enough of them to fully protect our bases,' a group of 13 Republican members of Congress wrote in an open letter to the Air Force back in May 2024. 'In order to complement active defenses and strengthen our bases, we must invest in 'passive defenses,' like hardened aircraft shelters… Robust passive defenses can help minimize the damage of missile attacks by increasing our forces' ability to withstand strikes, recover quickly, and effectively continue operations.' 'While hardened aircraft shelters do not provide complete protection from missile attacks, they do offer significantly more protection against submunitions than expedient shelters (relocatable steel shelters),' the letter's authors added. More shelters 'would also force China to use more force to destroy each aircraft, thereby increasing the resources required to attack our forces and, in turn, the survivability of our valuable air assets.' Outside of the United States, especially in China, but also in Russia, North Korea, and many other countries, there has been a growing trend in the expansion of hardened and otherwise more robust airbase infrastructure. Air Force officials have also pushed back more actively on the idea of investing in additional physical hardening in recent years. 'I'm not a big fan of hardening infrastructure,' Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said at a roundtable at the Air and Space Forces Association's main annual symposium in 2023. 'The reason is because of the advent of precision-guided weapons… you saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters. They're not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.' Wilsbach was commander of PACAF at the time and has since become head of Air Combat Command (ACC), which oversees the vast majority of the Air Force's tactical combat jets and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft. The comments yesterday from the Air Force's current top officers in the Indo-Pacific region and Europe highlighting the continued focus on ACE and the challenges with that strategy are only likely to further fuel the ongoing debate about building more hardened infrastructure to help ensure American forces can continue to project air power in future fights. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Yahoo
Next Generation Fighter Critical To Future Air Superiority, Key USAF Study Concluded
A deep review of the U.S. Air Force's paused plans to acquire a new crewed sixth-generation stealth combat jet came to the unambiguous conclusion that the service needs such an aircraft to be best positioned to achieve air superiority in future high-end fights. The same analyses further reinforced the view that establishing air superiority will remain central to winning those same conflicts. A panel of senior U.S. Air Force officers discussed what is commonly called the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat jet, as well as the future of air superiority operations more broadly, at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium earlier today. 'Many of you know, we put a pause on NGAD, and we put a pause on NGAD to reflect, and we did a study on it,' Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel said early on in the panel. Kunkel is currently director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures at the service's top headquarters at the Pentagon. 'With that study, we asked ourselves some hard questions,' he continued. 'Is air superiority dead? What does air superiority look like in the future? Does the joint force need air superiority? And what we found is, not only in the past, not only the present, but in the future, air superiority matters.' 'We tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more vital option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,' Kunkel added. This is fully in line with comments that Maj. Gen. Kunkel made at a separate event that the Hudson Institute think tank hosted last week, which TWZ covered at the time. Envisioned ostensibly as a successor to the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, the NGAD combat jet requirements, at least as existed prior to the review, are understood to call for a relatively large, high-performance, and long-range design. The NGAD aircraft has also long been expected to feature a very high level of broadband low-observability (stealthiness) together with an array of advanced sensor, networking, electronic warfare, and other capabilities. All of that has been expected to come at considerable cost, with former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall saying in January that it would take at least approximately $20 billion to finish the developmental stage of the program. Serial production of the jets, which cost upwards of $300 million apiece, would add tens of billions more to the overall price tag. The alternatives to the NGAD combat jet that the Air Force is known to have explored include a truncated, lower-cost aircraft intended primarily to serve as an airborne drone controller. The service also considered a force-wide shift in focus away from air superiority to longer-range, standoff strike capabilities like those the B-21 Raider stealth bomber will provide. Kunkel and the other Air Force officers on today's panel stressed that NGAD is just one part of the bigger and more critical matter of how to effectively provide air superiority in future major conflicts, such as one in the Pacific against China. 'The entire joint force counts on air superiority. So, anything else you want to do in the battle space, if you don't have air superiority, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible,' Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command (ACC), another one of the panelists, said. 'So, if we want to collect intelligence, if we want to do casualty evacuation, if we want to drop some bombs, if you want to sail some ships around, or if you want to have some ground maneuver, if you don't have air and space superiority, you will not be able to or you will have a very difficult time achieving any of those other objectives.' 'There's been some talk in the public about [how] the age of air superiority is over,' Wilsbach continued. 'I categorically reject that and maintain that it's the first building block of any other military operation.' Wilsbach cited the emergence of two previously unseen Chinese stealth combat jets this past December as further evidence that air superiority is not dead and that America's chief competitor believes it to be similarly critical for success in future conflicts. The two Chinese stealth aircraft 'we believe are for air superiority,' Wilsbach said. 'As we observe what China has produced, and we can presume we know what that's for, for air superiority, what are we going to do about it? And I don't believe that nothing is an option.' — OedoSoldier (@OedoSoldier) December 26, 2024 — Justin Bronk (@Justin_Br0nk) December 26, 2024 The panelists did also make clear that they do not see the NGAD combat jet as a silver bullet solution to future air superiority challenges by itself. 'We're making this transition from a platform-centric Air Force to a system-centric Air Force,' Gen. Kunkel said. 'And as kill chains get longer and longer,… we need to think about how are we trying to do that whole system.' Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin made similar remarks during a keynote speech at the AFA Warfare Symposium yesterday evening. 'We're looking at different ways to execute the same mission. We're going beyond just single platforms equal single things,' Allvin said. 'Maybe there's different ways to provide combat effects, understanding what that is, embracing and leaning into human machine teaming, understanding what autonomy can actually do for us, knowing that's going to be a part of our future.' Allvin then announced new 'fighter drone' designations for the designs that General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing in the first phase, or Increment 1, of the Collaborative Aircraft (CCA) program. CCA is part of the larger NGAD initiative that also includes the planned sixth-generation stealth combat jet. The NGAD aircraft has always been envisioned as serving, in part, as a forward drone controller and otherwise operating closely together with CCAs. The panelists today were also definitive in their belief that piloted combat aircraft will continue to have a role for the foreseeable future. 'We've been doing quite a bit of simulator work with incorporating manned and unmanned teaming, and we believe that there's some value to that as we go into the future,' Gen. Wilsbach said. '[However,] in 2025 we don't have the artificial intelligence [AI] that we can pluck pilots out of aircraft and plunk AI in them to the degree that the AI can replace a human brain. Someday we will have that, I trust, but right now we don't.' 'We're in this place where we're improving the artificial intelligence aspects, the human-machine team, all those areas are growth areas, but we have to iterate to the outcome,' Lt. Gen. Dale White, currently the Military Deputy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, added during the panel discussion today. 'And I think that's … the path that we're on.' 'As we walk down this warfighting path, we're going to have to iterate to the outcome, and it's going to take some time,' he continued. 'I know this Air Force is up to the task. I think CCA is going to put us on that path.' 'The reality is, this is where the threat is taking this because our adversaries are doing very similar things,' White also said during the panel discussion in regard to AI and advances in autonomy more generally. 'We can't sit back and just watch.' 'I don't see us fully stepping away from, you now, manned aircraft ever,' Gen. Kunkel added. A final decision on what course of action to take in regard to the NGAD combat jet, and what that aircraft might look like in the end, has yet to be made. There are also lingering budgetary questions. Concerns about the affordability of the new sixth-generation aircraft were an important factor in prompting last year's review of the program to begin with. The Air Force has a number of modernization priorities it needs to balance funding for, including the CCA program and work on new stealthy aerial refueling tankers. Aviation Week just recently reported that service might be considering axing Next-Generation Air-Refueling System (NGAS), or at least the stealth tanker component, to help preserve funds for the NGAD aircraft. There is also the matter of the ballooning costs of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and an ongoing debate about the optimal size of the future B-21 Raider stealth bomber fleet. On top of this, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a complete review of spending plans for the upcoming 2026 Fiscal Year. The goal is to cut tens of billions of dollars from existing programs to help fund new priorities under President Donald Trump, including the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. Dysfunction in Congress raises additional concerns about when any major new defense spending might get approved. 'Fiscal constraints don't change what it takes to win,' Gen. Kunkel said. 'We know what it takes to win. It takes all of the Air Force. It takes air superiority. And if America wants to make those investments to win, then we'll do so. If America doesn't want to make those investments, then we'll take more risk.' 'I'm not so foolish to think that this is like a black and white decision on, you know, win versus loss. There's a degree of risk involved,' he added. 'But if we fund more force, we decrease operational risk. We decrease the risk for our policy makers.' 'And it is true that our adversaries are moving quickly. They are,' he continued. 'Fiscal choices should be driven by what it takes to win.' Gen. Kunkel has been and remains particularly bullish on the Air Force ultimately coming out of the current budget uncertainty with an increase in funding rather than a decrease. He did also acknowledge at the Hudson Institute event last week that cuts to existing programs could still be painful. Many questions remain to be answered about the NGAD aircraft's future. However, it is now clear that the Air Force has concluded that the path forward that offers the best option for achieving critical air superiority in future high-end fights with the lowest amount of risk includes buying a fleet of new crewed sixth-generation stealth combat jets. Contact the author: joe@
