The commissioning ceremony at Chiayi Airbase was attended by Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen, who said the F-16 upgrade project showed the firm commitment of the Taiwan-U.S. partnership.

The ceremony saw the inauguration of the first fighter wing of Taiwan’s Republic of China Air Force of ROCAF that have been fully equipped with the upgraded jets, which are designated the F-16V.

Chiayi is the home of the ROCAF’s 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, comprised of the 21st, 22nd and 23rd Tactical Fighter Groups. The 21st Tactical Fighter Group is the unit that has fully converted to the F-16V, with the ROCAF saying the service has 64 upgraded fighters already in its inventory.

This is out of a force of 141 F-16s, which are the survivors of 150 aircraft delivered in the late 1990s comprised of a mix of F-16A single-seat and F-16B twin-seat Block 20 aircraft.

The upgrade, known as the Phoenix Rising program, includes the installation of Northrop Grumman’s AN/APG-83 scalable agile beam radar, a new mission computer and upgraded electronic warfare equipment like the Terma AN/ALQ-213 Electronic Warfare Management systems.

Other upgraded systems include the Rockwell Collins-Elbit Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System, which allows off-boresight targeting of adversary aircraft during air combat, and a newer identification friend-or-foe system.

Taiwan’s F-16 upgrade program is expected to cost $3.96 billion and will continue until 2023.

In addition to the upgrade program, the island is also buying another 66 new-build F-16 Block 70/72 aircraft from the United States to replace its obsolete fleet of Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II interceptors.

Taiwan is scrambling to improve its defense in the face of China’s increasing determination to take back the self-ruling island, which China sees as a breakaway province.

China has repeatedly said it would prefer to reintegrate Taiwan into the mainland peacefully, but has refused to rule out the use of force. Modern Taiwan was founded in 1949 when remnants of Chinese nationalist forces fled to the island following defeat in the Chinese Civil War.

“What does the F-35 give us? And is there a way to cut our losses? Is there a way to not keep spending that much money for such a low capability because, as you know, the sustainment costs are brutal,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said a Brookings event.

Air Force officials recently said they are conducting a study to find the best mix of fighters including Lockheed Martin’s F-35, Boeing’s F-15EX and a replacement for the service’s oldest F-16s. Smith was thinking along similar lines.

“What I’m going to try to do is figure out how we can get a mix of fighter-attack aircraft that’s the most cost effective. And I am telling you right now a big part of that is finding something that doesn’t make us have to rely on the F-35 for the next 35 years,” he said.

Though the Joint Strike Fighter was conceived as a relatively affordable fifth-generation aircraft, it’s generally acknowledged as the world’s most expensive weapons platform. Flying the F-35 currently costs $36,000 per hour, and it has a projected lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion.

As of January, the F-35 was still struggling to meet its goal mission-capable rate, which is the percentage of aircraft that can meet at least one assigned mission. Only 69 percent met the threshold, well short of the military’s longstanding 80 percent goal.

While the F-35 was designed to replace the F-16 — among several other aircraft variants — Air Force officials said this month they were exploring less expensive options, including buying new F-16s from Lockheed, evaluating low-cost tactical drones and pursuing a clean-sheet fighter, as described by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown in February.

In broader remarks emphasizing more modest, cost-effective goals for the military, Smith said Congress must “seriously scrub” the Pentagon’s big-ticket weapons programs. Though Smith holds a powerful job, the F-35 enjoys strong support in Congress, and the lawmaker lamented that the country seems to be locked into the program.

“We have wasted a spectacular amount of money on weapons systems that either haven’t worked at all or who have not lived up to their promise,” Smith said. “The failure we wind up tolerating is failure on a massive freaking scale. Think F-35.”

In a statement to Defense News, Lockheed spokesman John Torrisi pointed to U.S. Marine and Air Force deployments of the jet and that it has flown more than 1,000 combat missions.

“We look forward to continued engagement with Chairman Smith and other key members of Congress on the vital F-35 program during the coming Defense Authorization and Appropriation cycle,” Torrisi said. “The F-35 is the most survivable, connected fighter in the world today.”

One of the reasons the Air Force is reevaluating the F-35 program is a tacit acknowledgment that the flat budgets projected in the near future may not allow the service to buy all 1,763 F-35s in its program of record.

The F-35 remains the “cornerstone” of the fighter fleet that the Air Force is pursuing, Brown told reporters during a Feb. 25 roundtable. However, he said there are “cost pressures” on the program.

“The reason I’m looking at this fighter study is to have a better understanding — not only the F-35s we’re going to get, but the other aspects of what complements the F-35 in looking 10 to 15 years out,” he said. “I want to make sure we have the right capability. That includes [the option of] continuing to buy the 1,763 [F-35s] like we’ve already outlined, but we also have a look at it to make sure it has the capability we need with Block 4 [upgrades] but also is affordable.”

At the same time, the service also needs capacity to support operations in the Middle East or other tasks such as defending U.S. airspace — missions that don’t require stealthy fifth-generation fighters that are more costly to operate.

“Geopolitics change faster than our programs of record. [With] the geopolitics we have now … frankly we need a significant capacity,” said Gen. Mark Kelly, who leads Air Combat Command.

“In a perfect world … a budget-unconstrained environment would have a huge number — capacity — of huge capability fifth-gen airframes for every squadron in the combat air forces. The challenge with [that] is the reality of fiscal requirements of a nation that is coming out of a pandemic and the impacts of it, and the demand signal of being really busy around the world.”

The AFRL payload for undisclosed research was placed onto a preplanned suborbital trajectory following its launch March 3 aboard a sounding rocket, which took off from NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Terrier-Terrier-Oriole Sounding Rocket was built by the Space Vector Corp. and Kratos Space and Missile Defense, the latter of which provided integration, interface and mission planning for the launch.

This was the first sounding rocket launch delivered under the Sounding Rocket Program-4 contract, designed to provide suborbital launches and support services for the Space and Missile Systems Center. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract worth up to $424 million was awarded to two parties: OrbitalATK and a joint venture led by Space Vector Corp. in partnership with Kratos. The award covers a seven-year ordering period.

“This mission is a great example of the innovation in SMC contracting and using small launch contracts to expand our capability and provide support in launching experimental missions,” said Lt. Col. Ryan Rose, chief of SMC Launch Enterprise’s small launch and targets division, in a statement.

“Congratulations to the entire government and industry team on successfully executing this important mission, and launching in only 16 months from contract award during the challenging conditions presented this past year,” she added.

As assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, Roper oversaw an annual budget of $60 billion in funding for research and development, testing, procurement and modernization of all Air Force and Space Force acquisition programs.

He was perhaps even more well known for his advocacy of novel technology from the commercial sector. During Roper’s tenue with the Air Force, the service started AFWERX, which aims to give contracts to startups and other businesses who don’t typically do business with the government. In 2012, while at the Pentagon, Roper established and directed the Strategic Capabilities Office created to rapidly modify existing systems to address emerging threats.

“Dr. Will Roper joins Volansi’s board with a reputation as a transformative, forward-looking leader,” said Volansi CEO and co-Founder Hannan Parvizian. “His deep expertise in emerging technologies and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in logistics operations will be instrumental in aiding Volansi’s mission to change the future of supply chain.”

According to Volansi, Roper “will focus on the company’s strategy, operations, and growth in defense markets.” There are several near-term opportunities for Volansi to sell its products to the U.S. military.

One is an AFWERX project that Roper championed, known as Agility Prime, where the Air Force is seeking to experiment with technologies from the burgeoning commercial electronic vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) market to see whether they could be used to transport troops or conduct logistics missions.

According to the Air Force, 19 companies have applied to participate in the Agility Prime air race. Although the service has not specified which firms are involved in the effort, Volansi has indicated interest in the program, having debuted a new cargo drone called the VOLY M20 during a launch event in May 2020.

Volansi is already a player in developing the service’s Skyborg AI-equipped drone, after being awarded a contract in December 2020. The company has also received money from the Air Force through the Small Business Innovation Research program.

In a statement, Roper said that innovative commercial tech companies like Volansi are disrupting the way the Pentagon typically does business.

“Bringing speed and agility historically absent in government procurement, many vendors have early revenue-generating opportunities in national security as a path to commercial success,” Roper said. “Volansi is uniquely positioned in the commercial UAV market because of their focus on cargo and logistics, both huge components of modern militaries. I am excited to help them think through opportunities to bring on-demand, life-saving capabilities to men and women in uniform.”

Roper left the Air Force in mid-January. Earlier this month, he joined strategic advisory firm Pallas Advisors.

The MDA provided information to the GAO in June that indicated all construction and integration activities for the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR), based at at Clear Air Force Station, Alaska, had stopped last March due to the coronavirus pandemic. The program went into “caretaker status,” meaning just a small group stayed at the site to ensure the materials were protected from the elements.

This meant the initial fielding planned for FY21 was delayed and the Air Force would not take ownership of the operational radar until FY23, according to the GAO report.

The LRDR is an S-band radar that will not only be able to track incoming ballistic and hypersonic missiles but also discriminate the warhead-carrying vehicle from decoys and other nonlethal objects for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System, which is designed to protect the continental U.S. from possible intercontinental ballistic missile threats from North Korea and Iran. Lockheed Martin is LRDR’s manufacturer.

“We did have some fallback in developing and delivery of systems because it requires people to be in close, confined spaces and sitting at computer terminals working through really tough problems like the development of an algorithm,” MDA Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill said at the virtually held Space and Missile Defense Symposium last summer.

However, MDA says that as of the last week of February, the LRDR is “currently undergoing radar installation” at Clear and “is on track for delivery and Initial Operational Capability in 2021, having completed all major production activities as well as array panel and equipment installation.”

With Alaska reopening to travelers from the rest of the country, military construction resumed in May and radar integration resumed in July, according to MDA.

“Despite the challenges, the Corps of Engineers in Alaska, the State of Alaska, the Missile Defense Agency and the many contractors involved in the construction of the LRDR have been working together towards achieving IOC by the end of this calendar year,” the statement notes.

According to the GAO, the current test plan for LRDR has just one flight test scheduled in the third quarter of FY21, after two ground tests. The report does not clarify if the pandemic caused a delay in these tests, and the MDA announcement does not lay out a test schedule for the system.

The GAO indicated concern about conducting two ground tests before the program’s only flight test, as it “increases the likelihood that the models will not be accredited when testing is complete.”

As a result, “the performance analysis and the majority of the model validation and accreditation will have to be made concurrently, just prior to the LRDR Technical Capability Declaration,” scheduled for the third quarter of FY21, the report stated. “This increases the risk of discovering issues late in development, which could result in performance reductions or delivery delays.”

The new capability, named Pathfinder, fuses data from military, commercial and government sensors to create a common operating picture for North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command.

“It essentially takes and ingests — aggregates — data from multiple systems, data that would in the past have been … left on the cutting room floor and not analyzed or assessed in a timely manner,” said Gen. Glen VanHerck, who commands NORAD and USNORTHCOM, during the Air Force Association’s virtual Air Warfare Symposium last week. “The Pathfinder program uses machine learning to help us analyze that data from multiple systems — not only military systems, but commercial systems, other government agency systems.”

Previously that data stayed in separate systems, preventing NORAD from seeing the whole picture and allowing potential threats to slip through unnoticed. VanHerck pointed to a 2015 incident when a gyrocopter landed on the White House lawn as an example of how stovepiped systems prevented NORAD from seeing a potential threat.

“When you go back and look at that scenario, when you look at those systems that monitor the national Capitol region individually, no single system had full awareness or saw that gyrocopter,” he explained.

Pathfinder solves that problem by taking the data from each of those systems and fusing it into a common operating picture. In developing Pathfinder, NORAD virtually recreated the 2015 event by plugging the data from that day into its new AI-machine learning capability.

“We took Pathfinder and applied it to the available systems, the actual data, and used Pathfinder capabilities to assess that data,” said VanHerck. “And sure enough, there that gyrocopter was and he was easily detected by that point.”

To prototype pathfinder, NORAD partnered with the Defense Innovation Unit, a Pentagon organization that specializes in using emerging commercial technologies for military purposes. DIU Director Mike Brown said in December that Pathfinder was completed in record time — just a few months over a year.

In February, Kinetica announced it received a $100 million, five-year contract from the U.S. Air Force to use the Kinetica Streaming Data Warehouse for Pathfinder. The company’s service “ingests, analyzes and visualizes massive data sets … in order to model possible outcomes and assess risk,” according to Kinetica’s description.

“We’re using it today,” said VanHerck. “It’s out in our fields and our sectors right now. Historically our sectors were very manually driven — phone calls to pass data, etc. Today we fuse all that data together, and we’re seeing the picture much more real-time and much more in an automatic type of digital environment.”

Pathfinder can fuse data from more than 300 sensors to build its common operating picture, Brown noted. Beyond helping NORAD find more potential threats, Pathfinder also enables operators to move faster to assess those threats.

“We dramatically reduced their decision time — they have about 12 minutes to make a decision if they really thought there was an attack coming in over North American airspace — and we’ve cut minutes off that by giving them this common operating picture,” said Brown.

In many ways, Pathfinder is a microcosm of the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control concept, which seeks to use AI and emerging technologies to connect every sensor to the best shooter.

“What we’ve been able to do with NORAD in this fusing of sensor data and providing a common operating picture for better decision making, if you think about it, that’s the guts of what’s in JADC2,” said Brown. “That technology is going to continue to have broad applicability. And I won’t be surprised at all as we work on some other projects to see other applications of that basic technology be delivered.”

“I absolutely believe it can be a model for the Department of Defense,” said VanHerck. “It lays the foundation for improved data-driven decision-making and enhanced capability.”

Defense News Deputy Editor and Senior Pentagon Correspondent Aaron Mehta contributed to this report.

That’s what made unprompted comments by Air Combat Command head Gen. Mark Kelly so surprising during a Feb. 26 roundtable with reporters.

During the event, none of the 20-something journalists gathered ventured to ask Kelly about the NGAD program. But as the session drew to a close, Kelly decided to share his thoughts anyway.

“I for one am confident that the technology and the test points have developed to where NGAD technology will get fielded,” he said. “And I’m confident that the adversaries on the other end of this technology will suffer a very tough day and tough week and tough war. What I don’t know — and we’re working with our great partners — is if our nation will have the courage and the focus to field this capability before someone like the Chinese fields it and uses it against us.”

Kelly declined to comment on how close the Air Force is to fielding NGAD — typical of the mystery surrounding the program.

While much remains unknown about the effort, Air Force leaders have said it’s a “family of systems” that could include manned aircraft, drones or other advanced capabilities, rather than a traditional fighter in the mode of the F-16 or F-35.

But it’s unclear how many NGAD demonstrators now exist and which companies manufactured them. Practically every detail about its performance is also classified.

“It’s a keen focus, a keen capability,” Kelly said of NGAD. “We just need to make sure we keep our narrative up and articulate the biggest benefit we’ve had as a nation — to have leading-edge technology ensuring we have air superiority for the nation and the joint force.”

Kelly’s comments may portend that the program is at a turning point where more funding is needed to accelerate its development and fielding timeline.

Lawmakers have been somewhat tepid to the program thus far, funding $904 million of the Air Force’s $1.044 billion request in fiscal 2021. The service previously received $905 million for the program in FY20.

In the FY21 defense policy bill, Congress also mandated that the Pentagon’s independent Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office conduct a study on Air Force and Navy future fighter programs, including on NGAD’s technology, cost and business case.

Even before the U.S. Space Force was established, the Pentagon pivoted to describing space as a war-fighting domain, claiming it reflects a change in the environment led by American adversaries. U.S. officials have laid the blame for the militarization of space squarely at the feet of nations, including China and Russia, that have developed, tested and fielded various weapons capable of destroying or disabling satellites on orbit.

Gen. James Dickinson, head of U.S. Space Command, said a common question he gets asked is, “So why have we militarized space? Well, the answer is we really haven’t. Our competitors have.”

That narrative, which he shared Feb. 26 at the virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium, was a major part of the messaging put out by Pentagon officials and the Trump administration to justify creating the Space Force. Some, however, question the characterization that the militarization of space is a recent development.

“Space is not a sanctuary, and really it never was a sanctuary. As soon as we were able to use space for military purposes, nations — including the United States — started developing counter space weapons,” said Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Space has been militarized from the beginning. There’s no question of that.”

By nearly every definition, space has already been weaponized, he added.

“The cat’s out of the bag,” said Harrison.

And while the Space Force doesn’t often talk about counter space weapons publicly, it is developing and fielding its own.

Regardless of who initiated the militarization of space or when it happened, the fact remains that America relies on space systems for military operations, and its adversaries have developed counter space weapons to deny those space-enabled capabilities.

“This is a war-fighting domain. It is contested. That’s just the fact of life,” said Harrison.

So how can the Space Force and other space operators defend space systems?

A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies outlines the various threats posed to space systems and the strategies the Space Force and others can adopt to counter them.

Titled “Defense Against the Dark Arts in Space” and peppered with Harry Potter references, the report categorizes the different types of threats, the various defense strategies and their efficacy, and makes several recommendations for the Department of Defense and Congress.

“What we wanted to do with this report is look at the other side of the equation. So yes, you see all of these threats to space systems, but what do you do about it? How can you defend against all of these different forms of attack?” said Harrison.

The report examines passive and active defenses. Passive defenses are efforts to mitigate the effect of counter space weapons. Those defenses could include architectural changes, such as adopting distributed architectures, as the Space Development Agency has done, in which the loss of a single satellite will not disable a space-based capability. Other examples are technical defenses such as jam-resistant waveforms, antenna nulling, and using filtering or shuttering for sensors. Passive approaches also include operational defenses such as stealth, maneuvering satellites away from threats, and rapidly deploying new satellites to replace damaged or disabled ones on orbit.

Active defenses are kinetic or nonkinetic options that attack a counter space threat. That could mean a satellite-mounted laser used to blind an incoming missile, or some mechanism that could grab and remove enemy satellites positioned to attack. Such defenses also include strikes on ground systems or enemy satellites in response to an attack.

Harrison said one challenge with active defenses is making sure they are seen as defenses and not on orbit offensive weapons.

The report lays out the objectives of attacking and defending in space, and runs through some hypothetical scenarios. It concludes with several recommendations, including increasing space domain awareness, the development of new distributed architectures and the addition of non-kinetic active defenses such as lasers and jamming devices to high-value satellites. Though the report makes recommendations for the Pentagon and Congress, Harrison noted that CSIS’ analysis could be applied to other nations and organizations.

“The reason we did this study is there has not been a lot of public discussion made about these issues. And so what that’s lead to is that we’ve seen folks at other think tanks and in government and even other parts of government have started to act and behave as if space is not defendable,” said Harrison. “That’s not the right answer. That’s not a plausible answer, either. We can’t just do without space.”

“What we’re trying to do is open up the public dialogue and give nonspace experts and space experts alike a tool, an ability, to have that discussion in open forums,” he said.

“I want to actually look at what options do we have,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said during a Febl. 25 roundtable with reporters for the Air Force Association’s Aerospace Warfare Symposium. “It would be premature for me to commit to the Wedgetail right now, or a timeline. This is something I have to spend a little more time on looking at. But I realize there are some Wedgetail fans out there.”

One of those fans is Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, who told reporters Feb. 24 that he is in favor of a near-term purchase of the Boeing 737-based Wedgetail to replace the aging E-3 Sentry, which is based on the older Boeing 707 and colloquially called “AWACS.”

“The fact is, we actually need something relatively quick because of the reliability of the E-3,” Wilsbach said, according to Air Force Magazine. “It gets harder and harder to get airborne.”

The Air Force currently maintains an inventory of 31 E-3s, which were produced between 1971 and 1984. The E-3 is expected to fly until 2035, but the task of maintaining the aircraft is becoming harder as parts become obsolete and more difficult to source.

Because of “sustainment challenges related to supply of needed parts and maintenance of the aging aircraft,” the Air Force’s E-3 fleet did not meet its availability goals in fiscal years 2011 through 2019, the Government Accountability Office stated in a 2020 report.

The U.S. Air Force has not rolled out a plan for replacing the E-3, but rumors have swirled over recent years about the service’s interest in adding the Wedgetail to its budget if enough money can be found. However, there currently is no Air Force program of record for the E-7 Wedgetail.

Boeing originally developed the E-7 for the Royal Australian Air Force, which introduced the plane into service in 2009. Since then, the aircraft has been procured by Turkey and South Korea. The United Kingdom has also committed to buying five Wedgetails, with its first plane expected to be delivered in 2023.

In 2018, during his time as Pacific Air Forces commander, Brown flew in an Australian E-7 and spoke with Royal Australian Air Force officials about the aircraft.

On Thursday, Brown said his experience onboard the Wedgetail showed that it was a “capable platform,” but he still wants to look at other options.

“As I’m talking to our staff here, and we look at the E-3 and the mission-capable rates for the E-3 and what we’re spending on it today, we’re going to have to do something. I don’t know what that ‘something’ is yet,” he said. “We’ve got to really look at what the options are, and the Wedgetail is one of those. But it may not be the only option.”

WASHINGTON — In year two, the U.S. Space Force wants to build deeper connections with commercial industry, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond said Thursday.

“If you look at historically what has been commercially viable in space, it was commercial launch and large communications satellites,” said Raymond. But now, “almost every mission that we do in space has a commercially viable path.”

Raymond made his remarks during a talk with astrophysicist and media personality Neil deGrasse Tyson for the Air Force Association virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

The general credited that change with the lower cost of putting payloads in orbit and the increased capabilities of small satellites to make them more “operationally relevant.” The former has been driven by the significant growth of the small launch market in recent years, with new providers entering the market and competing for government and commercial contracts.

Earlier this month, the director of the Space Development Agency — which by law is set to join the Space Force in 2022 — similarly credited commercial developments with enabling the mega-constellation it is building.

“It’s not anything the government has done. It’s really what’s been driven by commercial enterprises, commercial innovation and commercial industry pushing the price down, [not] only in the cost of these satellites, but the cost of launches has dropped significantly as well,” said SDA Director Derek Tournear.

Prior to the establishment of the Space Force, the U.S. Air Force took efforts to enable more contributions from smaller, nontraditional vendors. For instance, the Space Enterprise Consortium, established in 2017, works to streamline contracts through other transaction authorities directed at rapid prototyping projects.

Other transaction authorities allow “us to get on contract much faster than traditional approaches,” Space and Missile Systems Center head Lt. Gen. John Thompson said in November. “In addition, the vehicle really lowers the bar for nontraditional contractors to become part of national security space efforts, makes it easier for them to get in the door. In fact, 350 of those 430 members of the consortium are really nontraditional contractors or academic organizations.”

The Space Force has since expanded that consortium with a new contract that will see it dole out up to $12 billion in awards over the next 10 years.

The Space Force has also taken over the Air Force’s Space Pitch Day concept, which invites companies to present their ideas and technologies in a “Shark Tank”-inspired competition. Acquisition officers are authorized to hand out contracts on the spot.

Commercial providers have opened up whole new mission areas for the military in recent years. For instance, the U.S. Army has utilized commercial satellite imagery providers to build a new beyond-line-of-sight targeting capability, while the Air Force and the Army are looking into incorporating SpaceX’s Starlink network into their weapon systems.

The Space Force wants to harness those types of commercial developments for its missions, said Raymond.

“We want to build a very fused connection with commercial industry. We’re a small service and we think we can do that,” he said. “The explosion of commercial space … provides us a great opportunity.”