Space Force chief calls for tighter link between operators and buyers

WASHINGTON — As the Space Force invests in simulators and ranges to improve its testing and training enterprise, the service’s top officer wants to ensure that operators have a hand in shaping those capabilities.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters he wants the Guardians who operate satellites and ground systems to be more involved in the process of informing requirements for new systems and making sure the training equipment is adequate.

“Who’s best to inform the acquisition community as to what those requirements are but the operators who use it?” Saltzman said during a Jan. 31 media roundtable at the Pentagon. “We’re going to figure out how to tighten those linkages.”

He suggested that capability development and planning organizations like Space Systems Command and the Space Warfighting Analysis Center should share their early digital models of new systems with operators who can then demonstrate them in a training environment and identify what works and what doesn’t.

“There’s a tight relationship between capability development and how fast we’re doing it with the operational requirements for test and training,” he said.

The Space Force is on a path toward creating a National Space Test Training Complex that will provide real-world and simulated infrastructure to improve how Guardians practice tactics and how the service develops and fields new capabilities. Space Training and Readiness Command is developing a vision for the range as well as other testing and training infrastructure needs.

Saltzman, who was sworn in as the Space Force’s second chief in early November, said he expects the service’s fiscal 2024 budget to include funding for those efforts.

“I can’t give specific numbers yet, but we are investing in and developing what I’m loosely calling an operational test and training infrastructure,” he said. “That includes simulators, that includes ranges, it includes the testing equipment, it includes the digital engineering efforts.”

Saltzman said he wants to ensure that space operators are prepared to respond to a range of threats — and he thinks more virtual training infrastructure like simulators can help with that.

“I’m trying to build a set of tools that gives maximum flexibility,” he said.

Along with the infrastructure, the Space Force is establishing metrics for gauging how prepared its forces are. STARCOM Commander Maj. Gen. Shawn Bratton told C4ISRNET in September he expects those benchmarks to be completed this year.

Saltzman said today that ensuring that Guardians are equipped with the tools to meet those targets is one of his priorities.

“Just because we have the right systems in orbit or on the ground doesn’t necessarily make it a ready force,” he said. “Personnel have to be trained. We have to have operational concepts. We have to have tactics that are validated and the operators have to practice those tactics.”

US Army goes virtual to help Ukraine maintain weapons

WASHINGTON — The first M777 howitzers arrived in Ukraine less than two months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The howitzer, which can hit targets as far away as 40 kilometers, was quickly embraced by Ukrainian soldiers, who praised it on social media for destroying enemy targets with precision and at critical ranges.

But the M777 also required maintenance and repair, which Ukrainian troops were unsure how to do. From a parking lot in Poland, the U.S. Army started answering the call for help.

The service began offering remote maintenance support, in which Army maintainers demonstrate to Ukrainian maintainers, through a virtual connection, how to take care of the weapon system.

While this remote capability isn’t new, the burgeoning connection between international coalition forces and Ukraine is growing by the day and providing a road map for future battlefield plans, according to Lt. Gen. Christopher Mohan, the deputy chief of Army Materiel Command.

The Army is using this experience to inform its thinking about “distributed sustainment operations on a highly lethal battlefield,” Mohan, who previously led Army theater sustainment in Europe, told Defense News.

“The lessons we are learning in [the European theater] are applicable across every [combatant command],” he said. “We are doing it right now, but with an eye on the future as well.”

Making a connection

When the Army first started transporting equipment to Europe for Ukraine, the service tasked a young warrant officer and a small team of soldiers from one of its Army Materiel Command brigades on the continent to perform final maintenance before handing it over, Mohan said.

The warrant officer developed contacts with the Ukrainians, who had plenty of questions after they started using the platforms.

The American team began using a commercial application to virtually meet with the maintainers in Ukraine and demonstrate how to make repairs, Mohan said. However, he would not identify the specific technology.

When Mohan heard about the effort, he went to check it out. “We went down there and we said: ‘Man, this is the future. We need to reinforce that success.’ ”

The Army increased its communication capability, pulled together a larger network of logistics assistance representatives and warrant officers, and began to build sustainment packages for repair parts to deliver to Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian maintainers are … very, very resourceful,” Mohan said, “and they are very good at keeping the weapons systems that we provide them in the fight.”

The key, he said, is providing them the necessary repair parts and a way to ask questions. Indeed, the Army started using interpreters to be able to talk to Ukrainian maintainers as well as soldiers on the battlefield.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and Kyiv has received support in the form of weapons systems and training from international allies.

On a trip to Europe last year, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth observed the remote maintenance capability. She told Defense News last fall that the effort helps keep weapons on the battlefield that might otherwise be unusable.

“These are systems that probably, we in the Army, would declare inoperable. But necessity is the mother of invention,” she said. “So we’re working to do some new things to put them back on the battlefield.”

Over the course of nearly a year, the capability “has exploded,” Mohan said. The Army built a standalone facility in a secure area and a repair parts warehouse, he noted.

Now, Ukrainian soldiers can communicate with staff at the Army’s U.S-based depots, giving maintainers access to expert engineers and original equipment manufacturers. They are all involved daily to help quickly repair battle-damaged systems and return them to the field, according to Mohan.

Experts stateside and in European depots and installations are communicating with Ukrainian maintainers via text message chats, prerecorded video or live stream to work through issues or guide a repair, Mohan added.

Just last week, Mohan said on Jan. 23, he attended a remote repair session. “It was powerful. We have assisted in returning or keeping a significant amount of combat power on the battlefield in support of our allies.”

But the process has become more complex as the Army expands its remote maintenance capability to support higher-end platforms headed to Ukraine, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle and the Patriot air defense system.

Remote maintenance in and of itself creates a range of challenges, including ensuring communication is secure. Personnel must also keep up with demand in the midst of a war.

Army Materiel Command has “moved mountains and [is] making, frankly, miracles happen,” Doug Bush, the service’s acquisition chief, said in a press briefing this month.

“I’m encouraged by what we’ve done so far. As we send more additional advanced equipment like Strykers and Bradleys, like tanks,” he said. “that sustainment activity will have to increase in complexity, and plans to do that are underway.”

Taking a page from Ukraine

The Army is now feeding lessons learned through the remote maintenance capability established in Europe into an Army Materiel Command study as well as a plan sought by the Army secretary for how the service would support combat forces in a highly contested environment, Mohan said.

The Army’s Multi-Domain Operations doctrine, released last fall, has a special section on how the service will manage logistics and sustainment in an environment contested all the way to the tactical edge.

The service is considering emerging technology that would contribute to sustainment in this kind of environment, including additive manufacturing at the tactical edge to manufacture parts near the battlefield, and autonomous resupply, demonstrated during the Army’s Project Convergence experimentation event in the fall of 2022, Mohan added.

“If we don’t use [the war in Ukraine] as a window into what future warfare looks like on a very lethal and highly distributed battlefield, we’re foolish,” Mohan said.

General Atomics’ air-launched ‘Eaglet’ gets its wings

WASHINGTON — A General Atomics Aeronautical Systems-developed unmanned aerial system flew for the first time, launching from another UAS in a demonstration at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah.

The company, which is the manufacturer of the U.S. Army’s Gray Eagle UAS, has named its air-launched effect, or ALE, the Eaglet.

Eaglet launched from a U.S. Army-owned Gray Eagle Extended Range UAS in December as part of a jointly funded effort with the service’s Combat Capabilities Development Army Research Laboratory and Aviation & Missile Center, the unit of General Atomics said in a Jan. 31 statement.

The ALE is “intended to be a low-cost, survivable UAS with the versatility to be launched from a Gray Eagle, rotary-wing aircraft, or ground vehicles,” General Atomics President David Alexander said in the statement. “It enables extended reach of sensors and increased lethality while providing survivability for manned aircraft.”

The Army is pursuing options for both large and small ALEs to bring a variety of capabilities to the battlefield, from targeting to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to providing communications connections and data links.

Eaglet fits into the large category, which General Atomics said translates to having the ability to carry a wide variety of more powerful sensors and payloads.

The company said Gray Eagle is capable of carrying Eaglet for thousands of kilometers before launching it.

Teaming up

Eaglet is intended to contribute to advanced teaming command-and-control capabilities and can work with other long-range payloads that Gray Eagles and other Army aircraft carry “to support deep sensing” in operations. The Army’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, has taken a specific interest in ALEs as a means to jam, spoof or spy and fight from greater distance.

The next step for the Eaglet is to participate in other exercises to further determine its potential. The command in charge of Army modernization — Army Futures Command — approved an initial capability refinement document for ALE in the fall of 2019.

ALE is meant to be a part of what the Army calls its Future Vertical Lift “ecosystem,” which will include a manned Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, another manned Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, a Future Tactical UAS and ALE.

“The plan to acquire ALE is through an incremental approach that allows rapid prototyping and fielding of technology to field available capabilities while continuing [science and technology] efforts to mature and transition emerging technologies to fully realize required capabilities,” according to the Army’s fiscal 2023 budget. “This is accomplished through multiple prototype development activities for the air vehicle, payloads, and mission system architecture through experiments, simulations, and demonstrations conducted in parallel and/or sequential timelines.”

The Army is aiming to develop multiple ALE prototypes to be able to more rapidly move capability into the operational force, the documents note, and future increments will upgrade mission systems, payloads and interface to extend the range of ALE for missions in support of Long-Range Precision Fires, meaning ALEs will help enable targeting for weapons systems such as the Extended-Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, beyond line-of-sight.

The Army has evaluated multiple payloads on large ALEs including a synthetic aperture radar, electronic warfare capability and communications systems at various experimentation efforts over the past several years.

Air-launched tech was tinkered with during Project Convergence 21, a large-scale networking experiment put on by the Army, and at the Edge 21 exercise, where sensors were used to collect and distribute real-time information.

Avenues to Air-Launched Effects

In 2020, the service awarded 10 small contracts worth a total of $29.75 million to mature technologies in the realm of ALE as it works toward designing complex advanced teaming plans for what it anticipates will be needed as part of the aerial tier of the force in 2030 against high-end adversaries.

Raytheon, Alliant TechSystems Operations of Northridge, California, and Area-I of Marietta, Georgia, were awarded contracts to develop air vehicles while others like L3Technologies, Rockwell Collins and Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation were awarded contracts to develop mission systems.

Payloads development contracts went to Raytheon, Leonardo Electronics US Inc., Technology Service Corporation of Huntsville, Alabama, and Alliant.

The efforts were all meant to feed into the Army’s decision-making process as it develops ALE concepts and requirements.

In August, PEO IEW&S boss Mark Kitz said “some tech maturity investments” are expected in 2023. Coordination on ALEs between electronic warfare and aviation camps is in the early stages.

The Gray Eagle has also launched ALEs from other developers such as one built by L3Harris at the Army’s Edge event at Dugway in 2021. The system that flew at the event is capable of flying at more than 200 knots and has a range of more than 300 kilometers. The system had flown just one other time at Yuma, Arizona, in February.

The Army has also heavily tested and evaluated Area-I’s ALTIUS, the Air-Launched Tube-Integrated Unmanned System, over the course of nearly five years, first launching it from a UH-60 Black Hawk from a high altitude in August 2018.

Anduril bought Area-I in April 2021.

At Edge 21, the Army deployed ALTIUS from a C-12 transport aircraft at 18,000 feet and fired them from pneumatic tubes on an all-terrain vehicle on the move.

The Army intends to continue to develop its requirements and strategy for ALE and, according to budget documents, is aiming to release a request for proposals for ALE capability in the final quarter of FY24 and will go into engineering and manufacturing development in the third quarter of FY25.

Colin Demarest contributed to this report.

AI-powered surveillance sought for US Central Command

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is interested in installing always-on surveillance systems fueled by artificial intelligence and other advanced computing technology at sites overseen by U.S. Central Command.

In documents published last week, the service sought industry feedback on a potential high-tech “monitoring system” at Al Udeid Air Base, in Qatar, and other undisclosed “forward locations.”

Such a system could dramatically slash the manpower and man-hours needed to keep tabs on foreign workers, an around-the-clock assignment, the Air Force said. Al Udeid is the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East and served as a crucial evacuation hub amid the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Force protection personnel deployed across the [area of responsibility] are responsible for watching [other country nationals] work on various projects,” the request for information reads. “This artificial intelligence system would replace the need for in-person monitoring and reduce up to 75% of those billets, enabling USAF resources and force protection assets to be employed against higher priorities.”

Components of the future network will likely include cameras and other hardware, pattern recognition capabilities, automated alerts, geospatial tracking and real-time digital twins, or virtual models designed to reflect the real world. Exactly when a system would be up and running was unclear.

Generative AI like viral ChatGPT lands on DISA technology watch list

The Department of Defense is investing in and relying on AI to boost productivity and augment military operations, including manned-unmanned teaming, intelligence analysis and personnel preparedness. More than 600 AI projects were underway at the department as of early 2021, according to a public tally, with the Air and Space forces together responsible for at least 80.

Air Force Chief Information Officer Lauren Knausenberger in November said the service must “automate more” in order to remain dominant. The speed and flexibility afforded by AI, other U.S. defense officials have said, are needed to maintain an edge over technologically savvy competitors, such as China and Russia.

The Air Force in 2020 deployed AI as a pilot’s sidekick, allowing it to handle sensing and navigation aboard a U-2 Dragon Lady surveillance plane. More recently, AFWERX, an Air Force office in charge of identifying innovative ways to use technology, established a program called Autonomy Prime to learn about autonomous kit the private sector is developing and how the military can apply it, Defense News reported.

The Pentagon’s public spending on AI, including autonomy, rocketed to $2.5 billion in 2021. The figure sat at a little more than $600 million in 2016.

Capella Space creates US government-focused subsidiary

WASHINGTON — Capella Space, a Colorado-based satellite imagery company, said it created a wholly owned subsidiary called Capella Federal to help meet the “heightened security and facility clearance needs” of U.S. government customers.

“The new entity enables the company to further support its U.S. government and defense agency customers by providing expanded access to its synthetic aperture radar imagery with increased security and continued on-demand reliability,” the company said in a Jan. 31 statement.

Capella’s synthetic aperture radar satellites rely on radar rather than electro-optical sensors to capture imagery from space. The technology allows the satellites to see through inclement whether and at night and collect data like moisture content, elevation and precise movement. The capability has been in high demand from the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community and has provided key insights into Russian troop movements in Ukraine.

Capella Federal will build on its parent company’s work with the National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Space Force and other customers, it said.

“Capella Federal will allow for that continued support and will provide some of our most valuable customers with the necessary tools to make critical, potentially life-saving decisions,” Capella Space CEO Payam Banazedeh said in a statement.

Eric Traupe, a former CIA official, will serve as president of Capella Federal.

Workforce woes are top ‘strategic challenge’ for Navy, admiral says

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy and its suppliers have thousands of open jobs at government repair yards and in the private shipbuilding and ship repair industrial base, as hiring and retaining skilled workers has become “our No. 1 strategic challenge across the enterprise,” according to the head of Naval Sea Systems Command.

Vice Adm. Bill Galinis said Monday government and industry are competing against each other for a undersized pool of talent in both trades and white-collar specialties.

Across the Navy’s four public shipyards, which repair and modernize the fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, he said the Navy ended 2022 short about 1,200 workers. The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii was generally sufficiently staffed, he said, but the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington was short on engineers and technical experts, while the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine faced “pressure points” in their trade shops.

Among the new challenges, Galinis said at an American Society of Naval Engineers conference here, is a shrinking wage gap between these Navy jobs and “some of the fast food restaurants, Starbucks, and Amazon and those types of companies.”

Galinis told Defense News after his speech the fiscal 2023 budget included pay increases across the federal government for civilian employees who follow the general schedule pay scale, which includes the bulk of the white-collar workforce at Navy yards.

The federal budget, however, didn’t affect the trades jobs, meaning the welders, electricians, pipefitters and others who do the hands-on work to repair submarines and aircraft carriers at these Navy yards did not see the same pay boost as their counterparts. Even so, the Navy redirected money in FY23 to create a pay scale structure for tradesmen and add pay increases to keep the jobs competitive.

“Just like most of the other federal employees got a pay increase, we need to give our trades a pay increase as well,” he said.

“When we go to hire somebody, we talk about the entire package. Compensation is just a part of it. There’s a training element, there’s future benefits, but it’s really an opportunity to become a part of something larger than yourself,” he told Defense News. “What we ask our trades, in particular, and our shipyard workers … is to take on some really hard jobs, but also some very important jobs.”

Galinis pointed to the submarine industrial base and the Team Subs collection of government offices as an example of proactive workforce development. The Southeastern New England Defense Industry Alliance has partnered with General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and other local vendors to train more than 1,400 shipyard and manufacturing workers in the last few years, Galinis said during his conference remarks.

In Danville, Virginia, the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing program has graduated more than 100 people from a four-month course since it opened in 2021, teaching them to do work like welding and machining. Galinis said the program — a collaboration among the Defense Department, the state of Virginia, the Danville Community College and private entities — would produce 800 to 1,000 trained workers a year by 2025.

The admiral said the FY23 budget included money for this type of workforce development and training, but government alone can’t solve this problem.

Matt Sermon, the executive director for the Program Executive Office for Strategic Submarines, noted at the same conference a recent analysis showed the submarine industrial base will need to hire 100,000 people over the next 10 years for submarine construction alone, at the two main shipyards as well as their 17,000 vendors. This would cover the workforce needed to build one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and two Virginia-class attack submarines each year.

A separate study is ongoing on the number of workers the industrial base and the Navy will have to hire in the next decade to conduct submarine maintenance work. Sermon said an initial estimate indicates that may total around 130,000 workers.

Galinis told Defense News this focus on people, while necessary, is coming at a cost to the Navy.

“Everything is going up,” he said, to include the cost of hiring, training and retaining a workforce, bringing in subcontractors to supplement the workforce, and buying materials for them to use.

“Everything from material to wages to just the cost of doing business is going up,” he said. “The other thing is, when you ask for an estimate on a job, that is only good for a very short period of time. … Things are just that dynamic in the materials market and the labor market.”

Pentagon launches management reform institute to address challenges

WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Defense Department, a mammoth federal agency long criticized even from within as inefficient and overly complex, is embarking on a new step toward improving how it conducts its affairs.

The department on Tuesday launched the Defense Management Institute, an independent research entity aimed at advancing the Pentagon’s management, organization, performance improvement and enterprise business operations. Proponents said the entity, part of the nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses, will have a far-reaching impact as it pools experts and past research for officials and lawmakers to solve problems or retool the department.

“It’s groundbreaking because never before has there been an institute dedicated solely to performance improvement,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at the launch event. “Management reform advances the entire department, including acquisition, technology ― all of which are essential to the department’s mission and to directly support the warfighter.”

The new launch comes amid fresh calls in Congress to cut the Pentagon’s budget. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has signaled his support for some cuts in defense spending amid growing tension within the House GOP ranks over the party’s approach to a coming fight over the debt limit.

The $850 billion national defense budget makes up half of all discretionary federal spending, but cutting it could mean unwinding some of the world’s most complex bureaucracies. The Defense Department not only employs a massive array of troops and civilians, but it operates around the globe with a medical system, a school system, an internal intelligence agency and grocery chain.

Officials say the Defense Management Institute, or DMI, will not only conduct studies and analyses on behalf of the department but also build a public library of past management reform studies and reports spanning the Pentagon’s own boards and commissions, as well as academic institutions and think tanks.

“Future generations of the department should not have to start from scratch. This institute will help them solve problems more quickly and efficiently,” Hicks said.

DMI would also bring together and link defense officials to the loose community of experts in the field, which includes former Pentagon employees, congressional staffers and private sector management consultants.

DMI plans to tackle a major job, right off the bat, when it conducts a review of the effectiveness of defense agencies and field activities, which Congress mandated in the 2023 defense policy bill. These components, among the most complex parts of the department, have periodically been targeted for cuts by lawmakers.

Defense budget expert Todd Harrison said the new organization could fast become a go-to source of ideas and analysis to identify waste and inefficiency in defense, or potentially reassure fiscal conservatives that investments in defense are well spent.

But a key factor in its success will be how well it can establish its intellectual independence from the Institute for Defense Analyses and Pentagon leadership, he added.

“I think it is a significant step in terms of creating the institutional momentum for sustaining a focus on better management and performance across the defense enterprise,” said Harrison, the managing director at Metrea Strategic insights. “This creates an organization and a body of people whose full-time job will be building the intellectual basis for better decision making, [but it] must be willing to speak truth to power to be credible.”

The DMI launch is arguably the most public step in the realm of defense management reform since Congress in 2020 eliminated the Pentagon’s chief management officer job, four years after establishing it as DoD’s No. 3 position.

The department has since dispersed the CMO’s duties and responsibilities among different officials. Hicks is the DoD’s management chief, while the lead for department reform is former Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who is both the department’s current director of administration and management as well as its performance improvement officer.

Donley, who spearheaded the launch of DMI, said one of the key goals is to translate private sector practices and experience to the Pentagon.

Among performance improvement efforts under the Biden administration, Hicks said she and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have expanded the role of the Defense Business Council and pushed the broader use of data analytics to inform decision-making.

To harness big data, the DoD developed an internal application, called Pulse, in less than five months, which Hicks said would set the pace for similar efforts.

“The secretary will have a far better view of implementation of the [National Defense Strategy] than our predecessors were ever afforded,” she said. “This dashboard approach will give us data-driven insights into what’s working and what stuck and what we can do about it.”