The 388th Electronic Warfare Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, will begin operations Thursday, one week after the 563rd EWS launched across the country at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.

Together, they aim to bolster the military’s ability to disrupt the networked weapons, navigation tools and communications systems that form the backbone of modern warfare.

“Operational-level tools that we use as a force to plan, integrate, synchronize and collaborate [on] electronic warfare effects are basically nonexistent,” Col. Josh Koslov, head of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing at Eglin, told reporters Wednesday. “We’re building that capability.”

Electronic warfare allows troops to manipulate the spectrum of radio waves to block forces from talking, distract precision-guided munitions from their targets and install malicious software on enemy systems, among other offensive and defensive options.

The service is also mulling fresh tactics that would allow its combat missions to succeed even if airmen can’t communicate, if navigation systems go down, or if command centers are cut off from forces in the field.

Rather than supporting a particular asset, like the Compass Call electronic-attack fleet, the squadrons are the Air Force’s first units solely dedicated to software for electronic warfare at large. They’ll also help manage the “mountains of data” the Air Force amasses on its adversaries, to better understand the enemy and create new tools to counter them faster, Koslov said.

“Externally, it’s about providing tools by which to plan, synchronize, collaborate,” Koslov said. “Internally, it’s about speed.”

The 563rd EWS, which previously trained electronic warfare and combat system officers before it was deactivated in 2010, will focus on responding to operational units’ requests for new EW software, based on what they encounter in the field. Airmen will update the apps as needed to keep pace with evolving threats.

One program now in development will track the process of receiving commanders’ requests for new EW tools, building them and deploying them through the Air Force’s Pacific-focused 613th Air Operations Center in Hawaii, Koslov said.

Once that’s complete, the 563rd EWS will look at ways to speed up new software for the Air Force’s most advanced assets, like the F-35 Lightning II fighter, Koslov added.

At Eglin, the 388th EWS plans to study the digital capabilities of adversaries like China to determine where the Air Force could worm its way in to disable them. Those discussions will shape how the service codes and wields its own EW tools, and how airmen train to use them, an Air Force spokesperson said.

For instance, electronic warfare could lead air defenses to shoot away from an incoming U.S. aircraft, or stop a signal jammer from blocking an American attack.

“We’re going to ensure that we are using the best techniques, tactics and procedures in order to attack ‘red’ — our adversaries — to achieve blue objectives and support that joint force,” said Lt. Col. Tim West, the squadron’s incoming commander.

Multiple intelligence-focused teams will be nested within the 388th EWS, West said, including a group who will pore over Chinese, Russian and other electromagnetic offenses and defenses to determine what poses the greatest threat to U.S. and allied forces.

The two new squadrons are staffed by a combination of new trainees and those who have served in other EW units. Koslov expects the 563rd and 388th will grow to 150 to 200 airmen over the next few years.

Another existing squadron, the 39th EWS at Eglin, will pivot from developing electronic warfare tools to instead become stewards and curators of data collected on the capabilities of foreign forces.

The new units arrive in the midst of the Air Force’s yearslong push to revamp its electronic warfare enterprise with a more holistic view of those battlefield needs and a warfighting mindset. Koslov said the service has opened six new EW units in the past year and plans to launch at least four more.

Last October, the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing launched two other detachments at Robins AFB, Georgia, that will identify weak points in U.S. networks and move to protect them. Their parent organization, the 950th Spectrum Warfare Group, is designed to assess how effectively various aircraft can wage and endure electronic attacks, and improve jamming and spoofing at military exercises.

Koslov said he aims to bring at least 400 people to Robins as part of that effort.

Despite a staff shortage and other growing pains of revitalizing the Air Force’s once-robust EW enterprise, Koslov said airmen’s recent success in training exercises show they’re on the “glide path towards ultimate success.”

“We’re working towards getting better,” he said.

The Space Force is the Pentagon’s hub for organizing, training and equipping the units that provide satellite communications to the joint force, track missile launches, catalog debris that could damage spacecraft, take images of troop movements and wildfires from orbit, and more.

But as the newest service has taken shape — pulling together soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and fresh recruits to form the military’s smallest branch — the growing importance of space in global security has highlighted the need for a flexible, collaborative workforce for the decades to come.

“I’m extremely proud of the Space Force and all the good that it has accomplished,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Feb. 13 at an Air and Space Forces Association conference in Colorado. “But as good as we are, as much as we’ve done, as far as we’ve come — it’s not enough.”

The service hit its congressionally authorized staffing goal — about 13,900 billets overall — for the first time in 2023.

As of Dec. 31, the Space Force employed around 4,400 officers, 4,600 enlisted guardians and 4,900 civilians. The service plans to expand to 14,526 members, including 9,400 in uniform, in fiscal 2024.

Each year, that number creeps closer to the 16,000 personnel the Pentagon estimated the Space Force would reach as it lobbied Congress to create a lean new service in 2019.

Katharine Kelley, the Space Force’s civilian personnel boss, predicts “steady-state growth” that allows the service to keep up with operational needs without stressing the training pipeline or setting unattainable recruiting goals.

“We’re realists about what we can actually produce,” she said in a Feb. 23 interview. “There are plenty of people that say to me, ‘Why don’t you just add 10,000 more people?’ … We’re not trying to grow for the sake of numbers. We’re trying to grow for the sake of the mission capability.”

The Space Force is preparing to welcome reservists to its ranks under a new model that will allow guardians to serve in a full- or part-time capacity without leaving active duty. That approach lets the Space Force avoid the bureaucracy of standing up a separate reserve component while ideally offering troops more flexibility than active military service typically provides.

The window for reservists in the other armed forces to apply to transfer into the Space Force will likely open this summer or fall, Kelley said.

In the meantime, service officials will continue hashing out the details of how that hybrid workforce will function: How would it affect military housing or health care? How would promotions work? What would it mean for unit staffing? And what back-end human resources software does that require?

“It’s not copy-and-pasting the reserve model and dropping it into the Space Force,” Kelley said. “It’s truly, how are you going to manage one composition that has a couple of different ways to serve?”

Further growth may require the Space Force to take a more active role in its own recruiting. The Air Force has so far handled guardian recruitment in an effort to minimize overlapping bureaucracy between the two services, which comprise the Department of the Air Force.

But Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna, the service’s top enlisted leader, said that could change.

“We don’t have Space Force recruiters right now,” he told Air Force Times in a Jan. 11 interview. “That’s probably something we have to do.”

Still, the Space Force’s accession numbers haven’t suffered from a lack of in-house recruiters.

More than 4,000 people sought to fill just 492 enlisted billets in fiscal year 2023, the service told Congress in January. It signed up all but three of the 259 officers it sought last year.

The Space Force plans to recruit nearly 700 new enlisted guardians and 321 new officers in fiscal year 2024.

Bentivegna plans to work on refining the Space Force’s recruiting strategy in 2024, to give potential enlistees a better understanding of the service’s mission and what their place in it could be. That might mean mounting an ad campaign targeted at those who future guardians might ask for advice on joining the military.

“What do they say? What do they know about us?” he said of recruits’ family and friends. “I want to … start owning that more as a service.”

Rethinking training

As the service continues to expand, leaders are reconsidering whether the foundation they’ve built can carry them into the future. That begins with an overhaul of the training pipeline.

The Space Force has already designed a service-specific curriculum for enlisted recruits inside the Air Force-run boot camp. Now it wants to shake up how guardians train for their first job in uniform, starting with the officer corps.

Rather than sending officers to technical school to learn about a narrow slice of military space, the Space Force will start them out with an introductory Officer Training Course that exposes troops to the basics of its three core operational fields — intelligence; cyber; and running the satellites, radars and other systems that comprise space operations.

Once the foundational course is done, guardians will pick the career field they like best and head to their first operational unit for on-the-job training, rather than spending more time in the classroom, Kelley said.

That means the Space Force will eventually stop sending guardians to some Air Force-run tech schools, like intel training at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas.

The service eventually plans to expand the same idea to the enlisted corps. It’s unclear how long the vision might take to implement.

Officials hope the idea will lead to a more intuitive workforce that better understands how the military space enterprise functions overall. Graduates will go on to staff units that increasingly look to blur the lines between operations, acquisition and sustainment of military space assets.

“It is very difficult to separate satellite operations, cyber operations and the intelligence that you need to understand to deal with the domain,” Saltzman said.

For example, he said, “a cyber operator will be far better at their job defending the network if they understand the satellite operations, and they understand the intelligence and the threat, and how to ask the right questions.”

The new ops floor

As the pace of operations mounts — fueled by wars in Europe and the Middle East, deterrence in the Pacific, the proliferation of satellites on orbit and burgeoning threats to the U.S. military space ecosystem — the Space Force is unsatisfied with the number of troops it has focused on the daily mission, Kelley said.

The service plans to bolster its shift work, hoping to ease burnout among operational teams, make better use of the troops it has and create more bandwidth in case of a surge.

The Space Force wants to grow the number of crews who staff ops floors around the clock from three to five or so, Kelley said, to give guardians more time to train when they aren’t handling the mission.

To build those rotational crews, the service aims to more cleanly divide guardians who handle administrative work from those who staff daily operations — allowing more operators to focus on the mission rather than distracting them with managerial tasks.

Those crews will form standard packages of combat squadrons the service offers the joint force for daily missions around the world, like the Navy’s carrier strike groups and the Air Force’s future expeditionary wings.

That comes as the Space Force continues to open service component units that work directly with combatant commands like U.S. Central Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to ensure precision-guided weapons can land on target, pass communications between troops, protect U.S. satellites from electronic attack and flag incoming rockets, among other tasks.

The tenor on ops floors is changing, too. Space leaders want guardians to see themselves not as button-pushers at desks, but as warriors in a fight that extends around the globe and into orbit.

In the past, “it was not about what happens if somebody actually tries to take out one of your satellites,” Kelley said. “What we’re focused on now is where to put that manpower and those resources to really flesh out the operational warfighter capabilities.”

The service expects to lean more heavily on enlisted guardians to run daily operations, while officers handle more of the joint force planning to which space is key. Bentivegna noted the Space Force plans to open a retraining program this year to more easily balance its noncommissioned officer corps and others across specialties.

Space Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. David Miller told reporters on a Feb. 27 call that the service is “in a good place” in terms of the staff needed to handle daily tasks, though it’s “in no way … overmanned.” He declined to say in which fields the Space Force is spread thinnest.

But he acknowledged that as the mission set grows, so will the need for staff in expanding areas like missile warning and tracking. That’s especially driven by the Pentagon’s plans to put hundreds of disposable satellites on orbit to become more resilient in case of attack.

It’s time for the service to take a hard look at how many people it needs in each of those roles, and figure out how to promote and pay them fairly, Chief Bentivegna said.

“Am I happy with the structure? No,” he said.

Bentivegna said he’d like to see all guardians who are fully qualified be promoted, up to the first noncommissioned officer rank of sergeant (E-5) — when troops start vying for a smaller number of leadership positions.

“I don’t want to have commanders make a decision that, ‘Only 65% can get promoted this cycle,’” he said. “The only thing that the guardians should be … comparing themselves against is the standard, not one another.”

Kelley, the civilian personnel boss, said the service will advocate for guardians to be allowed to pocket salaries that rival those in the commercial space, cyber and other technology-focused sectors that compete with the Space Force for talent. When guardians may qualify for bonuses and how large those might be is also under consideration.

Officials contend there’s no time to lose in nailing down the details.

“There’s [a] real world at stake here. This is not hypothetical,” Kelley said. “As much as I worry about how much we’re trying to attack at once internally, to get stood up and do all these new things and build new laws and new policies, what’s at stake is you’re farther and farther behind where you need to be. And so I’m excited for what we can do.”

The Space Force is considering giving prospective guardians the option to enlist for an initial term of eight years on active duty — twice as long as first-term troops usually sign up for — in a bid to build a more stable workforce to span the coming decades.

It’s one change to personnel policies now under consideration as the Space Force looks to break typical military molds and craft a workforce that meets its unique needs as the Pentagon’s newest and smallest branch.

“I know eight years is a big commitment to make if you’re 20 years old, 21 years old,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna told Air Force Times Jan. 11. “But let me explain to you … the training you’ll get, the opportunities you’re going to get, the experience you’ll have — it takes time.”

All enlisted troops across the armed forces are already required to agree to at least eight years in uniform. But most serve out a four- or six-year term on active duty before spending the remaining time in the individual ready reserve — a pool of former active duty, National Guard and Reserve troops who can still be called up in an emergency.

Instead, the Space Force could ask guardians to spend their entire enlistment on active duty. Once those eight years are up, they would be off the hook — with no commitment to the individual ready reserve.

In a statement emailed after publication, Bentivegna clarified that the idea would not be mandatory for new enlistees.

“If offered, in addition to 4- and 6-year enlistments, 8-year enlistment options would be voluntary and tied to a potential incentive bonus,” he said. “The Space Force is carefully considering the impact of voluntary extended enlistment contracts; we have proposed a third-party study on the impact of this concept.”

Bentivegna hopes that a new set of policies, which will allow guardians to toggle between full-time and part-time service while remaining on active duty, can offer the enlisted force more flexibility while keeping them in uniform longer.

The idea is on the table because the Space Force, established in 2019, has discovered that its enlisted recruits skew older — averaging 22 years old — and are more educated than those of the other services. Rather than joining the military straight out of high school, 40% of those recruits enlist after earning an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree, the service said last month.

The Space Force also handles a niche set of highly technical missions, like cyber operations, electronic warfare and space-based intelligence, using an enlisted workforce of more than 4,000 people. All enlisted guardians must pass the background checks and polygraphs needed to receive a top secret/secure compartmented information clearance as well.

Because its recruits come in with more skill, and because the force is so small, the service doesn’t want to lose that expertise — or the money and time it takes to train guardians in those fields — after just four years.

The service will also explore how to structure re-enlistment bonuses and other incentives to avoid losing them to lucrative jobs in the space and cyber industries once the eight years are up.

“A guardian’s journey doesn’t end at the traditional four- or six-year mark, which enables the service to build the technical depth and expertise we need for great power competition,” Bentivegna said in a follow-up email from a spokesperson Jan. 30. “We are working to enrich their experience through technical training schools, fully qualified promotion policies, bonuses and [reimagining] our professional military education.”

Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium on Wednesday, Bentivegna noted that the U.S. also needs to reform military pay and benefits to make service more enticing and sustainable for those who do opt into years in uniform.

“That model that we’re looking at may be just a little outdated. What is the value proposition of service? It’s changed,” he said. “I think that’s the goodness of the dialogue we’ve had.”

It’s unclear whether asking prospects to join the Space Force for nearly a decade would make a dent in the service’s recruitment efforts.

More than 4,000 people sought to enlist in the Space Force in 2023, the service told Congress in January. But just a fraction make it into the limited number of available billets. The service plans to recruit nearly 700 new enlisted guardians in fiscal year 2024.

That’s a sliver of what the other armed forces aim to bring in throughout the year. For instance, the Air Force hopes to sign up 25,900 new active duty enlisted airmen by the end of September.

Todd Harrison, a military space expert at the American Enterprise Institute, warned the Space Force to do its homework before settling on major changes to career models.

He worries an eight-year commitment could make it harder for the Space Force to compete for talent with private industry and the other armed forces, if recruits see the contract as a long time to be locked into military service.

Harrison also questioned whether high performers, who may have other options to consider, would be attracted to an eight-year commitment. He suggested the Space Force track the correlation between how people feel about longer enlistments and how well they score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, an entrance exam that determines which jobs a recruit is qualified to hold.

“Look before you leap,” he said.

The youngest branch of the armed forces has lacked its own part-time workforce since its creation in 2019. That changed as part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in December.

The move is part of the Space Force’s broader vision to adapt military service to the needs of modern Americans. Eliminating the traditional component structure, which separates troops serving on active duty from those in Reserve or Guard units, aims to offer more flexibility for those looking to serve their country and ultimately keep them in uniform longer.

“When fully implemented, this new construct will allow us to manage our military force more effectively, improve quality of life and retention, and capitalize on skill sets developed outside the military to continue delivering unmatched space capabilities,” Maj. Tanya Downsworth, a Space Force spokesperson, told Military Times via email.

Now the service begins the difficult work of figuring out how to make the legislation a reality for the 9,000 or so uniformed guardians under its purview, as well as Air Force Reservists in space-related jobs. A phased implementation is expected to last five years.

“We’re looking at the language to make sure we exactly understand how to move forward,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna told Military Times in a Jan. 11 interview. “What does it mean to be part-time? What benefits do you have? … How do we promote? How do we select? What does that look like? We’re working through that right now.”

The Space Force works to protect American interests in space and supports military operations around the globe through a vast network of satellites and radars on Earth and in orbit.

As the new service shapes a workforce separate from and much smaller than the other armed forces, it has seized on an opportunity to avoid pitfalls that have accompanied transitions in and out of the Reserve components.

Last year, the federally funded think tank Rand Corp. found retention issues linked to persistent transition challenges for guardians moving to and from part-time roles in the other services — like the Air National Guard or the Air Force Reserve — from reappointment and pay delays to complications with benefits and medical coverage.

Now, as the Space Force prepares to continue expanding its workforce — the only branch Congress has allowed to grow in fiscal year 2024 — guardians will see new options to create their ideal career with potentially fewer headaches.

According to the 2024 NDAA, those on active duty in the Space Force will become classified as serving on “sustained duty,” a regular, full-time status; or as “not on sustained duty,” a part-time position.

Part-timers must still participate in at least 48 scheduled drills or training periods each year, and serve on active duty for at least 14 days (excluding travel time) per year; or serve on active duty for training for up to 30 days each year, according to the law.

The legislation also establishes the designation of “inactive status” for guardians. That would be similar to the Individual Ready Reserve that already exists in other services as an additional pool of people who can be called up in an emergency, Downsworth said.

It’s unclear how many guardians will be expected to serve on full-time, part-time or inactive status at any given time, she added. Air Force Reservists who work in space roles can also opt to transfer into the space service.

Officials hope the new model will attract more recruits in an already highly competitive field. The Space Force and Marine Corps — the nation’s two smallest military services — were the Pentagon’s only branches to meet their recruiting targets in fiscal year 2023. The Space Force plans to grow to 9,400 uniformed guardians by the end of September 2024.

Bentivegna believes more people could opt to join and stay in a service that doesn’t offer such a stark choice between staying and leaving when “life happens.”

“A lot of our part-timers will probably be in their normal job … in the space industry somewhere, or the cyber industry or the intelligence agencies,” he said. “How do we keep leveraging that and bring them back and forth in a way that makes sense?”

The new setup could lead to changes at the operational units, too. For instance, Bentivegna said, the policies could blur the lines between units such as the active duty 2nd Space Operations Squadron and the Reserve 19th Space Operations Squadron, which run GPS satellites from Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado.

“In many ways, I think that Space Force is rightly going to serve as a microcosm, [a] testbed for the larger military in figuring out how to create a more modern personnel system and a true continuum of service,” Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Military Times.

He added that the “bold new direction” will allow Space Force to continue being selective about who it brings in for its often technical, highly specialized jobs. Still, he acknowledged questions remain about how to implement the new model.

Bill Woolf, who heads the nonprofit Space Force Association, argued that a part-time workforce will make it simpler to leverage the expertise of troops who the service may not need continuous access to, but who are still worth keeping on the bench.

“Career flexibility seems to be important for young people these days,” he said in a statement to Military Times. “No other service will be able to offer this kind of flexibility.”

Is a Space National Guard still on the table?

The move to a hybrid workforce of guardians comes amid a long-running fight to create a separate Space National Guard, which proponents have pushed to become the Space Force’s primary combat reserve.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Mike Bruno, the chair of the space task force at the National Guard Association of the United States, told Military Times that the choice to pursue the non-component structure is untested and “ignores the proven history of the National Guard.” He noted his views do not necessarily reflect the Air Force, the Department of Defense or the Colorado National Guard, where he works as the director of the Joint Staff.

Nearly 1,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen perform space-related operations across more than a dozen units in seven states and one U.S. territory, according to the association. They manage missile warning systems, maintain systems that counter electromagnetic attacks and work with military communications satellites, among other missions.

Bruno also suggested that by creating a Space National Guard, the service could further leverage the Guard’s existing state partnership program to advance the space capabilities of foreign militaries.

Lawmakers from Colorado, a longstanding seat of military space operations, heavily favor the creation of a Space National Guard and supported language to do so that was scrapped from the new defense policy law.

Their advocacy comes amid an ongoing battle to retain the headquarters of the now fully operational U.S. Space Command, the joint combatant command in charge of daily space operations, in Colorado rather than move it to Alabama.

Harrison and others who oppose a distinct National Guard component for the Space Force argue it makes “zero sense.” Governors do not need control over the military space capabilities that currently belong to state Guards, he said, because they are “inherently global and … have to be managed at a national level.”

Critics also argue that the bureaucratic and financial costs of standing up an independent Space National Guard are simply not worth it.

“Adding a Space National Guard is like the antithesis of being lean,” Harrison said, arguing it would contradict the streamlined organization for which leaders have advocated.

A 2020 Congressional Budget Office analysis considered a smaller and larger version of a Space National Guard, estimating those options would cost about $100 million to $500 million each year. The White House Office of Management and Budget has also estimated it could cost up to $500 million annually to launch a Space National Guard.

Others, however, have contested the actual cost would be far lower. The National Guard Bureau pegged the price at only $250,000, according to Bruno, which he said would go toward tasks like changing building signage.

The 2024 NDAA instructed the Pentagon to again dig into the feasibility and cost of moving space functions conducted by the Air National Guard to the Space Force. An interim briefing is due to Congress no later than Feb. 1, followed by a final, unclassified report by March 1.

Congress has also requested that the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, submit a report by Aug. 31 detailing how its forces will evolve through 2050.

Brig. Gen. Mike Zuhlsdorf is a key player in those discussions. He serves as the deputy director for resource integration under the Air Force’s logistics, engineering and force protection branch.

As other defense officials negotiate with foreign leaders for access to bare-bones airfields and more established bases overseas, it’s Zuhlsdorf’s team that is figuring out how to turn those sites into valuable Air Force lily pads in a maritime-dominant region for the decades ahead.

Zuhlsdorf spoke to Air Force Times at the Pentagon on Dec. 15. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Is the Air Force talking to other countries about using foreign bases that already exist, or are you considering building new sites?

We are not putting in new bases. These are bases and airfields that we’ve had since World War II, where we were able to hopscotch across the Pacific to ultimately get close enough to Japan. There are a lot of airfields like that, whether it’s in the first island chain — Japan down through the Philippines — or the second island chain, near Guam and Tinian.

We’re talking about renovating, rejuvenating and rehabilitating. We will make sure the pavement is still viable, trim back the vegetation where the jungle has encroached on the runway, and set up the basic essentials that we need in the event that we need to flush aircraft from a hub into these spokes, keep them safe and then turn them.

What do we need? Things like fuel; major aircraft parts that six to 12 airmen might be able to fix there; maybe some munitions [and airfield repair resources]; the essential lighting or navigational systems for nighttime operations. A little bit of base air defense might be part of that, or camouflage, concealment and deception. Almost all the hubs will have a command, control and communication system that will fly in with them so that we can maintain connectivity to the mothership at all times.

We are working with allies and partners. Pacific Air Forces has identified airfields that we want to invest in, and they’re going to work with the Philippines and Australia to do that. We are teaming with them on some projects that will allow us to get fuel out there, some munitions capability and other long-range transport aircraft that would come in and be able to resupply.

Which existing airfields are currently on the list?

There are more in the second island chain that we are identifying. There are additional airfields that are in Guam and a few in the first island chain that we’ll eventually get to.

What we’re trying to do is nail down access and overflight stuff before a formal announcement would come out. Those that have been in the press are the ones where we’ve already teamed with those countries. We are working with other allies and partners in the area to secure that very critical access, overflight and basing.

[Editor’s note: A spokesperson for the Air Force’s international affairs branch declined to provide specifics about which countries the U.S. is in talks with to host air operations abroad.]

Will the Air Force expand Andersen Air Force Base on Guam or other areas on the island?

We have projects for some hangars that are going in at Andersen, and at some of the chosen hubs we want to operate out of, maybe a spoke or two — wherever we decide is optimal. We’re looking to maybe throw up a shelter system that allows us to safeguard critical equipment. We need to take into account the sustainment of all that equipment we pre-position, and so we will want to put those into a controlled-environment facility so that when we need it, it’ll operate as advertised.

We’re also thinking about protecting those hubs and spokes so that the airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines and guardians that we’re going to send out there will be as safe as possible. There’s a big threat from ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles. We’re trying to make sure those airmen can turn those aircraft as advertised.

None of us who wear this uniform are looking for war. Our job is to be prudent with taxpayer dollars, and what the American people want from us is to plan.

What’s the timeline to open these sites? How are you phasing them in?

Two to three future years defense programs (FYDP). We are working through [which sites should be prioritized].

Is 10-15 years too long?

We’re going to see concrete stuff within a [five-year] FYDP and it will continue to manifest through that time period. We’ve got some weapon systems in the queue — Next Generation Air Dominance, collaborative combat aircraft. It’ll happen in that window.

What are you learning from Air Force spokes across Europe that you’ve used in partner countries since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022? How are you applying those lessons to the Pacific?

This is a unique opportunity for us. We’ve been in U.S. Central Command, and being able to move pieces, parts, munitions, aircraft, personnel and everything like that has been relatively uncontested. Yes, the Army has had some challenges there when you talk about the main supply routes, but generally it was not a contested environment. Ukraine is a contested environment, and logistics lessons that we learn are invaluable.

What are the critical pieces and parts that they need? How did they get these parts from location X to location Y? Did they use this system or that system? How did they pull the data? We are rapidly getting to a data analytics framework that’s going to allow us to visibly see what supplies and equipment we need. We’re going to be able to throw that up into a basing and logistics data analytics environment that’s going to allow us to, as logisticians, figure out where we need to put the next aircraft part or the next load of fuel.

Russia and Ukraine have a lot of small unmanned aerial systems that are impeding each other’s progress. How are they tracking those systems? How are they taking those systems down? How are they doing air defense for air bases? Those lessons are being gathered up.

What is the proposed cost for Pacific basing projects in fiscal 2025?

We’re working through FY25. That’s part of the resourcing our senior leaders are churning through right now.

There hasn’t been a profound change in counter-drone technology over the past several years. Where does that capability stand and what would you like to see?

We are probably still nascent. We literally just had conversations about this — within the last four or five months — about expanding and investing more in that very important battlespace. There’s a lot of research and a lot of dollars that are being applied to that problem set. You see that coming into play not only in the Ukrainian-Russian war, but also now with Hamas and Israel.

Are small drones a threat in the Pacific, despite the region’s significant size?

These are all islands, and they all have an indigenous population. You can rest assured that there’s probably people who don’t like the United States on those islands. Some of these smaller systems could absolutely impact an air tasking order. To protect the integrity of that air tasking order, we need to think through how we can get at that small threat, while other people are thinking through those ballistic missiles and those hypersonic missiles.

It is a full-spectrum air defense platform for an air base that we’re looking at, along with the camouflage, concealment and deception program, electronic warfare, and all these bits and pieces.

What are the main hurdles to achieving this vision?

One of the big problems is not having a budget. When you think about procurement lines that we need to stand up and invest in, we absolutely need Congress’ help in getting a budget passed so we can get the capabilities that we know we need.

There’s always the joint interoperability piece that we are yearning for, and the ability to share information with our allies and partners. We’re trying to work a little bit more aggressively on what information we can share with them, and what tactics, techniques and procedures we might be able to share. We’ve had success in Australia recently on some refueling efforts with the F-35 fighter jet. That’s a big success.

We’re breaking down barriers where we can to make sure that we’ve got the necessary capability and that everybody understands what that is. We’re sending people over to Japan right now to work with them even closer on exercises and on different weapons systems. Those are big barriers, but we’re overcoming them.

The threat that’s been posed to us over the last three or four years from the People’s Republic of China has galvanized a lot of allies and partners of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. There’s an impetus for us to work even closer together moving forward.

What near-term spending is on the horizon?

We’re investing in pre-positioned assets. That includes the kits with the tools and equipment that are necessary to do the maintenance on those aircraft. We’re investing in fuel bladders, in the renovation of the airfields, and in the airfield damage and repair equipment.

Think about heavy equipment — mobile aircraft arresting systems. Some of that stuff we have not put on a production line in a long time. We are investing in production lines to get that built and put in place within this Future Years Defense Program. We’re investing in communication equipment that will allow us to do command and control.

We’re investing in our airmen with multi-capable airman training. The Air Force Expeditionary Center at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, is putting together the curriculum that’s necessary for us to train our airmen and get them ready to have a civil engineer do not just civil engineering work, but maybe change a tire or load a bomb or refuel a jet or protect the base. It’s about investing in all those things that are necessary for us to get at a threat that, frankly, we just haven’t had to think about as much in the last 30 years.

When I came in, it was the Soviet Union, it was protecting the Fulda Gap in Germany. We learned a lot of skills that were multi-capable back in the late 1980s that we are now dusting off. We’re going to apply that to this near-peer fight.

The status of the other seven airmen who were aboard the aircraft, as well as what caused the incident, remained unclear. The crew was assigned to the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Wing at Yokota Air Base outside Tokyo.

The mishap is the latest fatal incident involving a U.S.-owned Osprey, in which dozens of service members have been injured or killed in accidents around the world over the past three decades.

Four fatal Osprey crashes, including Wednesday’s accident, have claimed the lives of at least 13 American troops in the past two years.

This is the first fatal incident involving an Air Force-owned CV-22 since 2010, and potentially the service’s deadliest accident since 2018, when nine Puerto Rico Air National Guard troops died in a WC-130 weather reconnaissance plane crash.

What is the CV-22 Osprey?

The CV-22 Osprey that went down Wednesday is a variant of the V-22 model produced through a partnership between Boeing and Textron’s Bell.

The tiltrotor aircraft — known for its towering nacelles that allow it to launch and land like a helicopter, and speed forward like a fixed-wing plane — began entering the U.S. inventory in 1999 with the Marine Corps MV-22.

That program started as a behind-schedule, over-budget invention that claimed dozens of lives during development. In the decades since, Ospreys have proven valuable for their speed and versatility, flying faster than conventional helicopters to approach enemies from unexpected angles or rush wounded troops to emergency care.

The Air Force received its first combat-ready CV-22 in 2007, and the Navy’s CMV-22 variant took flight in 2020 and deployed with carrier air wings in 2021. None of the sea service’s Ospreys have been involved in fatal mishaps. Japan’s military operates its own Ospreys as well.

The U.S. military now owns hundreds of Ospreys, largely operated by the Marines. Air Force special operations units use the CV-22 to slip in and out of areas without established runways, where fixed-wing planes may not be able to land with troops and supplies.

Ospreys can carry nearly three dozen service members or 10,000 pounds of cargo at a time, according to an Air Force fact sheet. Each is armed with a .50-caliber machine gun, and cost $90 million apiece as of 2020.

The Yokota-based unit involved in the most recent mishap activated squadrons in 2019 to operate and maintain CV-22 Ospreys as part of the Pentagon’s growing footprint in the Pacific.

But the technological advancements that the V-22 fleets brought to combat and training are still shadowed by concerns about the platform’s longevity and safety.

“CV-22 readiness keeps me up at night,” then-Col. Dale White, who oversaw acquisition and sustainment for the Air Force’s special operations platforms, said in 2019. “It’s not what it needs to be. It’s a tough platform to maintain.”

What problems has the Osprey faced lately?

A combination of pilot error and mechanical failures have contributed to periodic Osprey crashes that, when fatal, have killed multiple troops at once. The military has recently turned its focus to tackling a problem known as a “hard clutch engagement.”

Last year, Air Force Special Operations Command temporarily grounded its Ospreys following back-to-back safety incidents in which the Osprey’s clutch temporarily slipped and then re-engaged, causing an uneven distribution of power to its massive rotors. Such slips can cause the aircraft to lurch dangerously.

A hard clutch engagement on both sides of a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey in June 2022 led to a crash that killed five Marines in California.

Then in February, the V-22 Joint Program Office — which manages the tri-service fleet — grounded an undisclosed number of Ospreys with more than 800 flight hours to replace aging clutch-related components.

The office claimed in July it had reduced the likelihood of hard clutch engagements, or HCEs, by 99%.

“The V-22 community executed 22,258 flight hours between Feb. 3, 2023 and July 19, 2023, with zero HCE events,” the Joint Program Office said at the time.

The following month, three Marines were killed when their Osprey crashed in northern Australia. The Marine Corps is still investigating what caused the accident.

“I wouldn’t right now apply a sweeping broad stroke across every incident linking them together,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said when asked in August whether a clutch malfunction was to blame for those fatalities.

It’s unclear whether Wednesday’s crash involved a hard clutch engagement.

According to the Associated Press, Japanese news outlet NHK quoted a local resident as saying he saw the aircraft turned upside down, with fire coming from one of its engines, and then an explosion before it fell to the sea.

A non-exhaustive history of Osprey accidents

• October 2023: A Marine was injured after a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey experienced a hard landing during a training event in Nevada. “Initial assessments indicate the incident was likely not mechanical in nature,” a Marine Corps spokesman said in October.
• September 2023: Three Marine Corps Ospreys diverted from scheduled flight paths in a single week due to “caution indications” in the cockpit. The service said the warnings did not appear to be prompted by clutch issues.
• August 2023: Three Marines were killed in an MV-22 Osprey crash in Australia during a multinational training exercise.
• October 2022: The engine of an Marine Corps Osprey caught fire during training at Air Station Miramar, California. No one was injured.
• Summer 2022: Air Force Special Operations Command’s CV-22 Osprey aircraft face two hard clutch engagement problems.
• June 2022: A problem with the clutch of an MV-22 Osprey aircraft caused the June 2022 crash that killed five Marines, according to a Marine Corps investigation released this July.
• March 2022: Marine Corps aviation investigators have determined that a fatal March 18 MV-22B Osprey crash near Bodo, Norway, that killed four Marines was pilot error.
• September 2017: Two service members were injured when a Marine MV-22B made a hard landing in Syria.
• August 2017: Three Marines were killed when their MV-22B Osprey crashed off Queensland, Australia.
• May 2015: Marine Corps officials determined that decisions made by pilots in low-visibility conditions contributed to an MV-22B Osprey crash in Hawaii that left two dead and 20 more injured.
• October 2014: One Marine died when he jumped from an MV-22B Osprey that nearly crashed shortly after taking off from the flight deck of an amphibious assault ship. The Defense Department reclassified his death as one that occurred in support of the military’s effort to combat the Islamic State group, making him the first official casualty of Operation Inherent Resolve.
• June 2012: Five airmen were injured when a CV-22 was destabilized by the wake of another Osprey near Hurlburt Field, Florida.
• April 2012: Two Marines died and two were severely injured when an MV-22 Osprey crashed in a Moroccan military training area while participating in a bilateral exercise.
• April 2010: A CV-22 Osprey accident near Qalat, Afghanistan, killed four people and injured 16 of the 20 onboard.
• April 2000: An MV-22 Osprey crash at Marana Regional Airport in Arizona killed 19 Marines.

Marine Corps Times reporter Irene Loewenson contributed to this story.

The gear aims to limit the potential risk to pilots and other aircrew amid a recent spike in lasing incidents. It’s also the first time that Air Force-issued eyewear is designed to block lasers as well as ballistic threats, the service said Sunday.

“Getting lasered without having proper protection could not only prevent the pilot from flying and landing an aircraft safely, but it could also cost them their career,” Capt. Pete Coats, who leads the eyewear initiative at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, said in the release.

When a laser pointer’s beam hits an aircraft’s windshield or an eyeball itself, the light can cause flash blindness that is particularly dangerous for troops that are taking off or preparing to land, according to the Air Force Safety Center. Preventing those disruptions can save lives in the air and on the ground.

A suite of eight types of eyewear — including daytime and nighttime anti-laser spectacles, anti-ballistics glasses, and visors that work with night-vision goggles — can shield airmen from those potentially deadly effects.

The gear is built to protect all aircrews except for pilots in the U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane and the F-35A Lightning II fighter, the service said In a statement. Aircrews on platforms that fly low and slow, such as helicopters or tiltrotor aircraft, need defenses against both lasers and ballistics, whereas those in fighter or bomber jets likely only need to fend off unwanted beams.

The service plans to distribute more than 42,000 pairs of the glasses and visors to its units over the next three years.

The need for such measures has played out at installations around the world, such as Italy’s Aviano Air Base, which said in October it had logged 13 lasing incidents against its aircraft over the past year.

The lights were most often directed at HH-60 Pave Hawk search-and-rescue helicopters, the base said, which are easier targets than the F-16 Fighting Falcon jets also stationed there.

American and Italian officials are crafting a process to notify local law enforcement of perpetrators’ locations, Aviano’s 31st Fighter Wing said in a release.

Aviano’s woes are part of a surge in the number of laser strikes reported to federal officials over the past few years.

The Federal Aviation Administration has logged more than 10,300 lasing incidents and 28 injuries so far in 2023, surpassing the nearly 9,500 events that were reported in 2022.

Airmen most often reported laser incidents in Florida, New Mexico and Texas within the continental U.S., and in undisclosed locations overseas, between October 2016 and December 2022, according to data collected by the Air Force Safety Center. The service recorded nearly 550 incidents around the world within that time period.

Aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft is a federal crime punishable by as many as five years in prison and up to $280,800 in fines.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations asks anyone with knowledge of a lasing incident to report them to the FAA or the Air Force.

“These are not harmless pranks,” the agency said.

Allvin’s letter — an initial blueprint for the newly installed leader as he begins a four-year term — indicates the chief will continue a multibillion-dollar technology modernization push and deployment reforms designed to best China and move on from two decades at war in the Middle East.

“We face a security environment which grows more complex by the day and a pacing competitor which continues to advance at an alarming rate,” he wrote. “We have a responsibility to lead and advance the integration of the joint force. … We must now follow through.”

Allvin, who was sworn into the top job Nov. 2 after serving as vice chief of staff, now leads America’s third-largest military branch as it faces challenges on multiple fronts at home and abroad.

His confirmation comes as the Pentagon ramps up efforts to vie with China for military influence around the globe, outpace its weapons development and head off a potential invasion of U.S. partner Taiwan. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war at NATO’s doorstep has prompted the U.S. to take a leading role in a growing slate of international air training and deterrence missions.

And Israel’s burgeoning war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas has sparked fears of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East, even as the U.S. tries to shift its attention to the Pacific.

In his letter, Allvin signaled an appetite to continue his predecessor Gen. CQ Brown’s mantra to “accelerate change or lose” on the global stage — a message Brown has carried into his new role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Pledging to support airmen and their families, transform military training and foster creative solutions to the Air Force’s problems, the missive laid out several strategic goals but few specific steps to achieve them.

“We must follow through on our commitment to the success of the team,” Allvin wrote. “It means uplifting our wingmen, while holding ourselves accountable … [and] removing barriers while maintaining and enforcing standards.”

Much of the letter focuses on the service’s acquisition goals, and achieving the right mix of combat assets that could prevail in modern warfare.

Allvin promised to turn Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s top priorities — a set of seven “operational imperatives” that range from hardening service infrastructure to bringing on new battle-management technology and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber — into “meaningful” reality.

That to-do list is at the center of the service’s plan to retire hundreds of aircraft it believes will be ineffective in future wars, and orient its proposed $185 billion budget toward developing and fielding cutting-edge tools that can process data faster and strike smarter than in the past.

As new assets roll off the assembly line, the chief wants to take a fresh look at how the Air Force will transition them into daily operations, like a fleet of artificially intelligent drones known as “collaborative combat aircraft” that are in development.

Allvin also said he will continue the Air Force’s efforts to revamp how it prepares for war and deploys units around the world. The service has launched multiple initiatives that aim to make deployments more predictable, with teams that train together ahead of time and arrive overseas as a standard package.

And he argued the service lacks the ideal organizational structure to compete with other world powers.

“This organizational design should focus on ensuring designated commanders can focus on training, readiness and warfighting,” he wrote. “Other commanders will focus on supporting capability development and sustainment.”

“All will be oriented on providing well-trained, equipped and ready forces for deterrence and conflict,” he added.

To field a healthy force, Allvin will need to reverse staff shortages among pilots and aircraft maintainers, according to Dave Deptula, a retired three-star general who heads the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies think tank at the Air and Space Forces Association.

The service also struggles to recruit and retain airmen to staff jobs that are key to 21st-century combat, such as cyber operations.

“If allowed to continue, [the shortages] will cripple the Air Force in our next major war,” Deptula said.

Some experts argue the service can’t achieve the transformation it wants without a major boost in defense spending.

“The biggest challenge facing Gen. Allvin will be to reverse the decline in the Air Force’s force structure,” Deptula said. “It is the oldest, smallest and least ready in its entire history. That is a result of decades of serious underfunding relative to the other services.”

One retired four-star general noted earlier this year that some of Allvin’s fiercest opponents may sit a few miles away from the Pentagon on Capitol Hill. He spoke to Air Force Times on the condition of anonymity while discussions of who to nominate for chief of staff were ongoing.

As the service tries to ensure it can prevent — or win — an air war with China, the retired four-star said, it must get lawmakers onboard with proposals that often clash with their parochial interests.

“It’s going to take some fairly drastic measures to let [the Air Force] catch up,” he said.

The sortie is a stepping stone on the airframe’s journey into retirement, as the Air Force reshapes its inventory for the demands of modern combat.

“It’s bittersweet,” 116th Air Control Wing boss Col. Christopher Dunlap said in a release Monday. “I’ve been flying this mission on this aircraft since the spring of 2003. There’s been a lot of changes over the years.”

JSTARS is a modified Boeing 707 that uses a long sensor on the belly of the jet to track the movement of ground forces around a region and share that information with other aircraft and troops below. Combat units rely on the fleet to highlight potential targets and stop friendly forces from veering into harm’s way.

Its final mission departed from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, a hub for U.S. military operations across Europe and points farther south. The Air Force declined to answer where the sortie took place or what it entailed.

“The aircraft’s sensors provided invaluable intelligence, guiding strategic decisions on the ground and enhancing operational effectiveness,” the service said in the release.

The fleet’s exit from military operations signals the end of an era in battlefield intelligence.

E-8Cs have flown in military operations from Desert Storm in 1991 to Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later, to the surveillance of Russian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border. They have also assisted in noncombat missions like transnational drug busts.

The fleet withdrew from U.S. Central Command in 2019 after an 18-year deployment supporting counterterror operations.

“The E-8C JSTARS has played a vital role in countless operations, supporting troops and safeguarding nations,” the Air Force said on Facebook.

The fleet, which included 16 operational jets when retirement began, has been managed by two Air Force units: the active duty 461st Air Control Wing and the Georgia Air National Guard’s 116th ACW, both at Robins Air Force Base.

Together, they have flown more than 14,000 sorties since 2002, when they merged as the service’s first “blended” wing, the service said. The 461st ACW logged its last operational sortie in June.

Plans to sunset the JSTARS fleet have gradually come to fruition over the past several years.

The Air Force briefly launched an effort to solicit another aircraft to replace JSTARS but abandoned that program in fiscal 2019. After sparring with Congress over the fate of the fleet, the service began retiring E-8Cs in February 2022.

Instead of maintaining a vast inventory of jets that are purpose-built for highly specialized missions, the Air Force now wants to use a network of satellites, aircraft sensors and ground radars to collect the same targeting and tracking data.

The service hopes that approach will make it more resilient against potential attacks on its command-and-control enterprise, save money on aircraft maintenance and use its airmen more effectively.

Two of the original 16 aircraft remain at Robins, according to the Air Force release. The last JSTARS is slated to depart for the Air Force’s graveyard of retired aircraft at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, during the first week of November.

Airmen may still use the jet for flight proficiency training until it is formally retired, Air Force spokesperson Capt. Dustin Cole said.

As its centerpiece fleet dwindles, Robins has started taking on new missions that the Air Force views as more relevant in future wars.

Nine E-11A airborne communications relay planes will be based at the central Georgia installation, as well as a command-and-control squadron, a group focused on electromagnetic spectrum warfare, and an office to handle the Air Force’s acquisition of future communications technologies known as the Advanced Battle Management System.

Some airmen are already working to open those units, while others are in training to staff them.

“You can’t expect a wing who has a long history of excellence to sit around and do nothing when there is plenty of work left to do,” Dunlap said in an emailed statement. “It is not in our DNA.”

The Z-5 airframe — a blended wing body design with an oblong fuselage and long, skinny wings that looks more like a B-2 Spirit bomber than it does a Boeing 747 — was chosen over one other competitor in a yearlong contest led by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. JetZero will ready a full-scale prototype for its first flight in 2027.

The decision marks a new milestone in aircraft design and offers a glimpse into a more capable, greener future for the Air Force inventory. Service officials praised the offering as a key development that will position the U.S. military to outpace Chinese technology and outmaneuver its forces in a potential conflict.

“We’re going into this new area where it’s all about bringing capabilities … to the Air Force, the warfighter [and] the commercial space,” JetZero Chief Executive Officer Tom O’Leary said at an Air and Space Forces Association event to unveil the plan.

The Pentagon’s renewed focus on the Pacific as its top priority has placed a premium on assets that can travel farther and faster without breaking the bank. Cargo and tanker aircraft are expected to fly into harm’s way more often, spurring the military and defense industry to reimagine the large, slow platforms for contested areas.

And the sooner that mobility assets can reach their destination, the more flexibility it gives the rest of the joint force on the battlefield.

“Greater range increases lethality. Fuel efficiency conserves our energy resources and allows us to generate more sorties,” said Ravi Chaudhary, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment. “In an era in which installations will no longer be the sanctuary they were in previous conflicts, this capability is going to be critical.”

The service last summer described blended wing body design as “one of the single most impactful technology opportunities for future U.S. Air Force aircraft.”

That approach flattens a traditional tube fuselage into a more aerodynamic, somewhat triangular shape to carry payloads where the wing meets the body and be less visible on radar.

The comparatively lighter design could be around 50% more efficient than a traditional mobility aircraft and able to travel twice as far — a goal that, if achieved, could substantially shrink one of the Air Force’s significant annual expenses as well as its environmental footprint. Air Force aircraft and bases guzzle around 2 billion gallons of fuel, costing many billions of dollars, each year.

JetZero’s partnership with Northrop Grumman on the Z-5 has received $40 million in government funds in fiscal 2023, Chaudhary said. The military will put $235 million toward the initiative through 2026, plus more from private investors.

If flight tests are successful, Air Force officials may consider a version of the JetZero aircraft to replace the C-5 and C-17 transport aircraft or to follow the KC-46 tanker.

Chaudhary said the Air Force will simultaneously build up the supply chain and other logistics it needs to transition the prototype to a full-fledged program, if the service taps it to make the jump into real-world operations.

But Maj. Gen. Albert Miller, Air Mobility Command’s director for strategy and plans, cautioned against viewing the jet as the sole solution for the Air Force’s next-generation airlift and air refueling programs.

At the least, it could offer a new perspective on the fuel efficiency and stealth qualities that workhorse aircraft will need in the future, he said.

The Air Force said in a press release the same day that “several military transport configurations are possible” using blended wing body aircraft. Officials also hailed its potential applications for commercial air travel as well.

“This project is a win-win for the commercial industry as well as for the DoD,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. “This is going to be a pathfinder project that’s going to make a big difference.”