SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The biggest threat posed by Russia and China lies in advancements in space capabilities, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff said during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.

Gen. Dave Goldfein joined chiefs from the three other services on stage at the forum, all of whom acknowledged threats posed by both Russia and China across the various domains. However, they acknowledged that an increased focus on armed forces anchored by a strong economy enable China to advance more quickly and with more sophistication.

“Russia is a rather dangerous threat because it’s an economy in decline and the demographics are challenging for the president,” Goldfein said.

“We’ve seen his [Vladimir Putin’s] actions when he finds himself” in that position,” Goldfein added. “But China is the face of the threat. China has the economy.”

In terms of space specifically, the threat lies not only in China’s increased domain awareness, he added, but the capabilities that the country is fielding.

China has been building up its anti-satellite weapons since 2007 to include kinetic weapons, jamming devices that can block GPS or satellite communications, and ground-based lasers. China has also bolstered its space capabilities and will boast the largest GPS-like system in space by 2020, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley said in November. He also noted that China conducted more space-oriented operations in 2018 than any other nation, and that the country possesses 250 military, civilian and commercial satellites in orbit — second only to the United States.

Goldfein pointed to three priorities for space investments during the panel.

First, “we have to defend what we have. At the same time we need to transition to defendable architecture. But it’s not good enough to take punches in the ring. At some point you have to punch back. And third, we need to transition our force into a war-fighting force” from one that for years dealt with a domain that Goldfein described as “relatively benign.”

The Air Force chief referenced findings of war games that the Air Force conducted in the space realm, among which was the 13th Schriever Wargame at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama in September. In that war game scenario, the year was 2029 and U.S. Air Force Space Command examined the integration activities of multiple agencies associated with space systems and services.

“In every war game we determined that if you move first in space, you’re not guaranteed to win. But if you move second, you’re likely to lose,” Goldfein said.

Beyond space, Gen. David Berger, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, pointed to China’s pivot to the sea as a primary threat that has already forced a shift in how the joint force addresses security in Asia.

“We had missteps. We owned those,” said Leanne Caret, CEO of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, during a briefing at the Paris Air Show Monday.

As previously reported, the Air Force agreed this spring to start accepting KC-46 tankers from Boeing again after the discovery of foreign debris halted production for the second time. Moving forward, all tankers will be subject to stringent inspections of all sealed compartments of the plane for foreign object debris, or FOD.

Those inspections are taking place and aircraft are being delivered, Caret confirmed, with a multi-tier inspection process happening in partnership with the Air Force both for new deliveries and aircraft already in the fleet.

“Fair to say we’re going above and beyond what [the Air Force] required,” said Greg Smith, Boeing’s chief financial officer and executive vice president of enterprise performance. “We’re doing what we feel is best, and learning from it… We have to set the bar higher than our customer has and deliver on those expectations we set for ourselves.”

The Air Force has said that the FOD found posed no safety of flight risk and was well within what the Defense Contracts Management Agency finds on many aircraft programs.

“But it’s not acceptable to have it on a new aircraft that we bought,” said Will Roper, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, in April on the sidelines of Space Symposium. He added that Boeing would do the inspections “on their nickel,” though Caret declined to comment on any changes to the contract or the amount of funding withheld to pay for the added layer of scrutiny.

“The debris and tools that were left on KC-46 upon its delivery were unacceptable. We took swift decisive actions,” Caret said. “We’re using this opportunity as our rallying cry – to ensure we enhance our process, [and] more specifically for first time quality across every aspect of the business across the company.”

“Our customers deserve better,” she added. “I personally apologized to our customers. This will not happen again.”

The KC-46 Pegasus makes its air show debut at Le Bourget.

So, a little more than 17 years ago.

Nothing about the timeline is terribly unusual for development of a military platform. The F-35 program faced more than its fair share of problems and criticisms tied to delays, cost overruns and manufacturing problems that needed to be addressed. But as far as time to full-rate production, complex systems take a long time.

Theoretically, though, it would seem ludicrous to allocate nearly two decades to develop a tech system, considering how rapidly technology evolves. And that brings us to ALIS.

Again, the F-35 has wrestled with a lot of challenges over the years. But what currently receives the most attention — criticism actually — is ALIS. It’s not working. And it’s frustrating maintainers to no end. Our air warfare reporter, Valerie Insinna, has extensively reported on the problems, but here it is in a nutshell: After years of updates and improvements, the F-35’s system, designed to bring efficiency to maintenance and flight operations, continues to be beset by data gaps and bugs that actually make it harder, not easier, to keep the F-35 mission-ready. Maintainers are figuring out ways to work around ALIS and its failures to get the job done. That’s a problem.

There’s a saying in the tech community: “Fail fast, fail often.” It would appear ALIS is nailing the latter, but taking far too long to do it.

And there’s a reason for that. Nothing about ALIS development mirrored the best practices of the tech community, and the result was “good code in a fairly bad user interface and a bad architecture,” as noted by the Air Force’s top acquisition official, Will Roper, in a recent interview with Defense News. Why is that? ALIS is a proprietary system built to Defense Department standards. Let’s break that down a bit. Proprietary means little to no leveraging of commercial technology or open standards. It means a single point of failure. And with standards predetermined by the Department of Defense, the ability to take an agile and therefore adaptable approach to development was all but squashed.

This issue is top of mind for me, as we’ve been reporting a lot recently about the cultural disconnect between the Pentagon and the tech community — “Silicon Valley,” some might say, though not really bound anymore by that specific geography. And, truly, you might say ALIS is the poster child for the failures within the traditional defense community to understand how best to develop technology. To resurface a tongue-in-cheek comment from Josh Marcuse, director of the Defense Innovation Board, about the Pentagon’s approach to innovation: “It’s OK to fail, you just have to fail very slowly, you have to fail very expensively and you have to fail with a high degree of documentation.” It would appear ALIS met that standard beautifully.

The Air Force is moving forward on a way to to fix things — a promising and actually innovative approach called Mad Hatter (clever, right?) that one can only hope will also offer up some better practices for future development.

The F-35 is not your typical tech development program. I get that. One might argue that the sensitivity of the data managed by the logistics systems, combined with the complexity of requirements, prevent commercial practices or open standards from being used. But that argument doesn’t hold water. Smart tech development doesn’t happen in lieu of security.

Did the defense community understand that back in 2001? Maybe not. But let’s hope everyone knows it now.

MUNICH — National Security Advisor H.R.McMaster made an appeal to NATO members and allies at the Munich Security Conference to look hard at who they’re doing business with overseas and cut off funding that indirectly funds Hezbollah and other proxy militias that weaken Middle East nations to bolster Iranian influence.

The Iranian regime continues to get support from commercial entities, affiliated with the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – “including Mahan Air, a company that lands right here in Munich airport,” said McMaster, referring to a report released at the end of 2017 by the National Council of Resistance of Iran that stated the Iran’s largest commercial airline in fact works as a tool for Iran’s expansionist policies.

In October 2017, President Donald Trump called for tougher sanctions against the IRGC, and the Treasury Department announced it was designating the IRGC as a terrorist entity under a White House Executive Order, for support of a number of terrorist groups, including Hizballah and Hamas, as well as to the Taliban. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the time said the IRGC has played “a central role to Iran becoming the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror,” urging the private sector to recognize that the IRGC permeates much of the Iranian economy.

“What Iran is actually doing is applying the Hezbollah model to the greater Middle East,” McMaster said. “They want the Arab world perpetually weak, and [they want] weak governments in power that are dependent on Iran for support, while they grow terrorist organizations, militias, illegal arms groups outside that government’s control that can turn against government if that government acts against Iranian interests.”

Beyond Syria, this approach is happening in Iraq, where IRGC has grown Popular Mobilization Forces, as well as in Yemen. That network of proxies becomes and more capable as Iran seeds to them more destructive weapons, McMaster said, nd that is funded through commercial means.

Click here for full coverage from the Munich Security Conference

“When you invest in Iran, you’re investing in the IRGC. You might as well cut the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a check and say, ‘please use this to commit more murder across the Middle East,’” McMaster said. “And when we look at the biggest trading partners with Iran, we of course see Russia, we see China. But we also see Japan, South Korea and Germany. It’s time to focus business intelligence efforts to figure out who we are really doing business with, and cut off funding.”