Tag: usaf

Dismissing Tom Clancy’s Fanboy Generals In the USAF

In his foreword to Tom Clancy’s book Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing, updated in 2004, a retired USAF general named John M. Loh writes: “This book chronicles the creation of a command with a unique culture – the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command. It possesses the leadership, the combat power, and the highly trained, competent people to provide the world’s best combat air forces anywhere in the world, at any time, to win quickly, decisively, with overwhelming advantage and few casualties. Tom Clancy does a masterful job of telling us all about it. I am proud to have served as the first commander of Air Combat Command, and proud to commend this book to your reading pleasure.” (Location 226)

Not only does the general validate Clancy’s outrageous claims about USAF pilots being the finest in the world, as one would expect from those who have both been thoroughly indoctrinated in the myth of American aerial supremacy, it just shows that the USAF liked Clancy because he published propaganda books that served their interests.

For those who have followed my writing career as a military reformer, you know that Tom Clancy sticks in my craw, and I am always keen to rebut his arguments, which never contain footnotes, or any documentation other than the words of defense contractors.

Although Clancy is no longer with us, General Loh still is, and I would like to offer the following news to him and other Clancy fanboys and ask them to possibly reconsider their bragging. In previous articles and my book I have argued that smaller air forces, such as the Royal Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Royal Canadian Air Force have outstanding reputations, with pilot selection and training standards that are higher than the USAF.

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U-2 Retirement Reprieve Emerges In Proposed Defense Spending Bill

Members of Congress are moving to prevent the U.S. Air Force from retiring its fleet of iconic U-2 Dragon Lady spy planes. The Pentagon approved a waiver last year that had cleared the way for the service to begin divesting the high-flying Cold War-era jets, which The War Zone was first to report. The Air Force’s current plan is to divest the last of the U-2s in 2026 and supplant them with a mix of still largely undefined space-based and other capabilities, which is widely believed to include a classified stealthy high-altitude drone.

The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of the annual defense spending bill for the upcoming 2025 Fiscal Year earlier today. It includes a provision that, should the bill become law, would explicitly and without exception prevent “funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act” from being “used to divest or prepare to divest any U-2 aircraft.”

As of the start of Fiscal Year 2024, the Air Force had 31 U-2s in its inventory, including a trio of two-seat TU-2S trainers.

Until last year, the Air Force had been blocked from retiring any U-2s by provisions in annual defense policy bills, or National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA), enacted in previous fiscal years. However, the earlier legislation had included a path to proceeding with retiring the venerable spy planes if the Pentagon could certify that certain stipulations had been met. Chief among these was the insistence that the resulting capability gap would be filled in a cost-effective manner. You can read more about this here.

“On October 30, 2023, the Secretary of Defense [Lloyd Austin] signed a waiver to divest the U-2 Dragon Lady in accordance with language in the FY 2021 NDAA waiver requirement. In signing the waiver, Secretary of Defense certified combatant commands will continue to be able to accomplish their missions at acceptable levels of risk,” an annual force structure report the Pentagon released in April further explains. “The ability to win future high-end conflicts requires accepting short-term risks by divesting legacy ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconniassance] assets that offer limited capability against peer and near-peer threats. The USAF will fleet-divest the remaining 31 U-2 aircraft starting October 1, 2026.”

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Five and Dive—Low Expectations Plague The Air Force Academy

During their final year at the Air Force Academy (AFA), cadets choose the specific jobs they will be assigned while on active duty.  This crucial decision, made in the nascence of one’s career, has far reaching implications with regard to career advancement.  The Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) links available jobs with an alphanumeric designation, and not surprisingly, pilot training represents the most popular AFSC for graduating cadets at the AFA.  But the second choice is astonishing for cadets who have received a four year education worth $416,000 at an institution that is tasked to train career Air Force officers.

The minimum commitment for an AFA education is five years of active duty service, and the AFSCs that obligate cadets for the least amount of payback time represent the second most popular job selections in the aggregate.  The act is known among cadets as “five and dive,” and it is borne of disillusionment and the realization that DEI entrenched military leadership, quota-based promotions, and falling standards are not what they signed up for. 

DEI’s nonsensical, unsupported claims that phenotype and sexual identity are indispensable components of superior military performance and the intimidating effect of DEI political officers embedded within the cadet wing breed cynicism and psychological fatigue. Recent undercover investigative reporting that exposes blatant corruption within Air Force DEI programs and an admission of DEI’s lack of benefit, affirms the negative view of DEI held by most cadets. If the real Air Force is at all similar to the academy experience, then why devote a career to an organization with priorities more in line with Cloward-Piven than the Constitution?

The AFA entices prospective cadets by falsely claiming that they will be challenged to the full extent of their abilities.  Those times are gone, and to revisit them, one must return to the academy’s early years.  The performative expectations of academy administrators and their political enablers have fallen precipitously—a disappointment for patriotic men and women, who do not expect, nor bargain for an Ivy League attitude at a U.S. military academy. 

The 4th class system at the AFA essentially no longer exists.  During basic summer training, upper class instructors cannot raise their voices, and safe spaces are available for those sensitive personalities bearing the brunt of criticism. Basic cadets are limited to performing three pushups if commanded by an upper classmen.  Summer training concludes with Hell Day, which lasts only hours, after which time members of the fourth class are allowed to function at ease for the remainder of their time at the academy.   Ask contemporary commanding officers to defend training that minimizes psychological and physical hardship, and they will respond in unison of their commitment to train “warfighters.” 

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US Air Force secretly develops missiles that could obliterate Iran’s nuclear facilities by zapping their electronics – without harming civilians

The US Air Force has quietly deployed missiles that could destroy the electronics of Iran‘s nuclear facilities with high-power microwaves, rendering them useless, without causing any fatalities, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.

Known as the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missiles were built by Boeing’s Phantom Works for the US Air Force Research Laboratory and first tested successfully in 2012. They were deployed—meaning installed in various locations around the globe—and became operational in 2019.

This comes as Israel has conducted strikes in Iran in retaliation for Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile assault earlier this week, defying US President’s warning that more attacks could plunge the Middle East further into conflict.

Mary Lou Robinson, then chief of the High Power Microwave Division of the Air Force Research Lab at Kirtland Air Force Base, previously confirmed to DailyMail.com that 20 CHAMP missiles were operational and ready to take out any military target, including nuclear facilities.

When asked for comment, Othana Zuch, an Air Force Research Laboratory public affairs officer, said that while ‘operational security precludes us from discussing specific operational applications for our technologies,’ the CHAMP missiles were considered a demonstration program and ‘we have since continued to develop advanced HPEM (High Power Electromagnetic) technologies’ building on the original demonstration.

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US scraps airborne directed-energy weapon program – media

The US Air Force has suspended its attempts to put a 60kw-class laser weapon on the AC-130J, its close air support aircraft, The War Zone said on Tuesday.

The military news outlet has received confirmation that the Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) program has been scrapped directly by the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). It linked the decision to the retooling of the Pentagon’s arsenals for potential conflicts with peer competitors, such as China.

The Lockheed AC-130 is a version of the C-130 Hercules transport, which the US has been using for over five decades in ground attack operations. The current AC-130J Ghostrider version was introduced in 2015. AHEL was supposed to add a directed energy weapon to the toolkit available for the aircraft.

The War Zone argued that AHEL was axed after years of delays because the Pentagon is preparing for “high-end” warfare, as opposed to counter-insurgency operations. The laser system was touted as an efficient way to deal with militants in an environment where US air superiority is not challenged.

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Mysterious Drones Swarmed Langley AFB For Weeks

Langley Air Force Base, located in one of the most strategic areas of the country, across the Chesapeake Bay from the sprawling Naval Station Norfolk and the open Atlantic, was at the epicenter of waves of mysterious drone incursions that occurred throughout December. The War Zone has been investigating these incidents and the response to them for months. We know that they were so troubling and persistent that they prompted bringing in advanced assets from around the U.S. government, including one of NASA’s WB-57F high-flying research planes. Now the U.S. Air Force has confirmed to us that they did indeed occur and provided details on the timeframe and diversity of drones involved.

This spate of bizarre drone incursions deeply underscores the still-growing threats that uncrewed aerial systems present on and off traditional battlefields, and to military and critical civilian infrastructure, issues The War Zone has been highlighting in great detail for years.

“The installation first observed UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] activities the evening of December 6 [2023] and experienced multiple incursions throughout the month of December. The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration,” a spokesperson for Langley Air Force Base told The War Zone in a statement earlier today. “None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions.”

“To protect operational security, we do not discuss impacts to operations,” the statement added. “We don’t discuss our specific force protection measures but retain the right to protect the installation. Langley continues to monitor our air space and work with local law enforcement and other federal agencies to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities, and assets.”

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Everything New We Just Learned About The Collaborative Combat Aircraft Program

Major new details about the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program emerged at the Air & Space Forces Association’s recent annual Warfare Symposium. This includes a clearer picture of the effort’s autonomy goals, aggressive production plans, and future operational impacts. Though questions remain about the capabilities and costs of these future uncrewed aircraft, the CCA program looks set to have a number of disruptive impacts that could fundamentally reshape the Air Force.

As it stands now, the Air Force is planning to acquire at least 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, and potentially more, as part of an initial tranche known currently as Increment One. Five companies – Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril – are currently working on Increment One air vehicle designs. Dozens of additional firms are supporting the program through the development of autonomous technologies, sensors and other mission systems, command and control capabilities, and more. A down-select on the air vehicle side of the first increment, from the initial five contractors down to two or three, is expected later this year. The goal is to have a CCA design actually in production by 2028.

Increment One CCAs are expected, at least initially, to operate very closely with stealthy crewed combat jets, including a new sixth-generation design now under development as part of the Air Force’s larger Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative, as well as certain F-35As. CCAs could be partnered with other crewed aircraft and operate more independently, in the future.

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FLASHBACK: Air Force research: How to use social media to control people like drones

Facebook isn’t the only organization conducting research into how attitudes are affected by social media. The Department of Defense has invested millions of dollars over the past few years investigating social media, social networks, and how information spreads across them. While Facebook and Cornell University researchers manipulated what individuals saw in their social media streams, military-funded research—including projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program—has looked primarily into how messages from influential members of social networks propagate.

One study, funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), has gone a step further. “A less investigated problem is once you’ve identified the network, how do you manipulate it toward an end,” said Warren Dixon, a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering and director of the University of Florida’s Nonlinear Controls and Robotics research group. Dixon was the principal investigator on an Air Force Research Laboratory-funded project, which published its findings in February in a paper entitled “Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity.”

The research demonstrates that the mathematical principles used to control groups of autonomous robots can be applied to social networks in order to control human behavior. If properly calibrated, the mathematical models developed by Dixon and his fellow researchers could be used to sway the opinion of social networks toward a desired set of behaviors—perhaps in concert with some of the social media “effects” cyber-weaponry developed by the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ.

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Big Sur UFO Film: Government Whistleblower Reveals He Watched It

According to two former US Air Force officers—Lieutenant Bob Jacobs and Major Florenze Mansmann—a USAF photographic team based at Vandenberg AFB, California, tasked with filming missile test launches, inadvertently captured the image of a domed, disc-shaped UFO as it circled and then disabled—with four flashes of an intense beam of light—a dummy nuclear warhead flying downrange over the Pacific Ocean. Jacobs had been in charge of the telescopic photography site located at Big Sur, California, and Mansmann was Vandenberg’s chief photographic imagery analyst.

The date of the dramatic incident was September 15, 1964. Two days later, a highly-restricted screening of the spectacular footage took place at the base—attended by Jacobs, Mansmann, and two CIA officers who immediately classified the event Top Secret. The film was then confiscated by the pair and flown “back East” for analysis and storage, according to Major Mansmann. The destination was undoubtedly the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) which, it is now known, had already engaged in UFO photo analysis for years.

By the early 1980s, Jacobs felt that enough time had passed following the stunning UFO encounter to allow him to discuss it publicly. He has explained that, at the time of the 1964 film screening at Vandenberg, Major Mansmann had only ordered him “not to talk about” the unexpected filming of the UFO with anyone, pointedly saying that it had “never happened”. No mention was made of its Top Secret classification, for reasons that remain unclear to the former Lieutenant. Furthermore, because the two officers lost touch with each other after leaving the Air Force, 19 years passed before Mansmann was able confirm to Jacobs that the two mysterious men in civilian clothes at the screening were in fact CIA personnel.

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Air Force To Totally Revamp Its Structure To Compete With China

To counter the growing threat especially from China, the Air Force is undergoing major changes in how it operates and is organized. Dubbed “Reopitmization for Great Power Competition,” details of the initiative will be unveiled Monday at the Air and Space Forces Warfare Symposium in Denver by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and other senior leaders, an Air Force official told The War Zone.

The changes will run the gamut from how the Air Force organizes its operational units to how it acquires new weapons systems, Andrew Hunter, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, suggested on Friday.

“We’re driving towards…the ability to do integration across our organizational stovepipes in the acquisition community but also on the operational community across the department to a much higher degree,” said Hunter, speaking at an Atlantic Council event.

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