Air Force Magazine
Daily Report for Feb. 27, 2020

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Edited by Amy McCullough with Rachel S. Cohen, Brian W. Everstine and Amanda Miller

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Budget Hearing Forecasts Battle Over Aircraft Retirements, Border Spending
By Brian W. Everstine

Lawmakers on Feb. 26 signaled a harsh fight ahead over the Pentagon's plans to
retire aging aircraft and shift spending from weapons systems to border wall
protection. The Defense Department’s total $705.4 billion fiscal 2021 request
looks to retire dozens of USAF aircraft. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley in their first testimony
on the fiscal 2021 budget request attempted to persuade the House Armed Services
Committee these decisions are needed to be ready for future conflict.
“There’s a fundamental issue at stake here, and it’s coming up in a lot of
areas, whether it’s tankers, maritime, ships, whatever it is. It’s a
question of divest to invest,” Milley said.

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Esper, Service Secretaries Sign Tenant Bill of Rights
By Brian W. Everstine

Top Pentagon leaders signed the Military Housing Privatization Initiative Tenant
Bill of Rights on Feb. 25, codifying steps to empower service members and
families residing in homes owned by private landlords. The document, mandated by
the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, comes after a slew of
problems in military housing, including mold, fire code noncompliance, vermin,
and other issues. The bill of rights goes into effect May 1.

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Empowering Disaster Response and Recovery From Space
When a natural disaster or emergency occur, an immediate and seamless response is necessary to
save lives. Operational and situational awareness becomes increasingly important to responders.
If critical infrastructure is down in the disaster zone, then the systems and networks required for
powering the relief efforts are compromised. Ground operations must look to space to solve their
communication needs. Read the full story.
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Space Force Preps for 49 Launches at Cape Canaveral
By Rachel S. Cohen

PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla.—The Space Force’s 45th Space Wing here is
gearing up for a hectic 2020 schedule that could entail launching at least one
rocket a week almost all year. Until recently, the wing’s “Drive to 48”
slogan focused on becoming able to host 48 launches in a single calendar year,
only stopping for four weeks to do system upgrades. Patrick and the launch pads
at its neighboring Cape Canaveral Air Force Station handled 19 launches in 2019.
Wing commander Brig. Gen. Doug Scheiss said his Airmen could handle as many as
51 events this year if more are added later. The wing’s new motto, “Set the
pace for space,” reflects that responsiveness is more important than sheer
numbers.

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Abrupt End to MQ-9 Production Surprises General Atomics
By Rachel S. Cohen

A General Atomics official said the company is surprised by the Air Force’s
plan to stop buying new MQ-9 Reapers in fiscal 2020, after expecting to
gradually wind down the production line. Chris Pehrson, General Atomics' vice
president of strategic development, told Air Force Magazine he anticipated the
service would phase out purchases of its iconic hunter-killer drone over the
next three to five years as the Air Force approaches the planned end of the
363-aircraft program. Instead, USAF revealed in its fiscal 2021 budget request
that it wants to buy its last 24 Reapers this year, cutting the total buy to 337
MQ-9s. Those final Block 5 aircraft will be delivered in 2023 and 2024.

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The Wide-Reaching Impact of DOD’s New Ethical Principles of AI
By Amanda Miller

Think of the Defense Department’s new list of Ethical Principles for
Artificial Intelligence as a starting framework to help guide the thinking of
people who will ultimately make the hard decisions: what’s right or wrong,
then how to teach a machine to tell the difference. In a special public lecture
Feb. 25 at the University of Colorado, Mark Sirangelo, a member of the Defense
Innovation Board, offered his own views on the new principles, presenting the
lecture in a private capacity as part of his faculty role as entrepreneur
scholar in residence.

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Cape Canaveral Wants Companies to Help Pay for Range Updates
By Rachel S. Cohen

PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla.—Space Force officials here want federal lawmakers
to tweak spending rules so the military can use money from private companies to
pay for infrastructure changes to the launch range at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station. “We're going to have to come up with ways that the launch providers
can also help us out,” 45th Space Wing commander Brig. Gen. Doug Scheiss told
Air Force Magazine in a Feb. 24 interview here. “They get a pretty good deal
from being able to lease our facilities and the things that we do with them, but
it's very difficult [when] they go, 'Hey, I'd like to be able to help out with
that.'”

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Radar Sweep

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Trump Taps Pentagon’s Acting Personnel Head to Take Over Permanent Job

The White House on Feb. 26 nominated Air Force Under Secretary Matthew Donovan
to fill the Pentagon’s top personnel post, officially promoting him from the
acting role he has served since early December.

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Air Force to Pump New Tech Startups with $10M Awards

The Air Force will roll out the final stage in its commercial startup investment
strategy during the March 13-20 South By Southwest music festival, granting one
or more contracts worth at least $10 million to startups with game-changing
technologies, service acquisition chief Will Roper says.

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Air Force Announces Vanguard Program Executive Offices

Vanguard programs will rapidly advance emerging weapon systems and warfighting
concepts through prototyping and experimentation. The PEOs for these first three
programs are: Golden Horde—PEO Weapons; NTS-3—PEO Space and PEO Agile Combat
Support; and Skyborg—PEO Advanced Aircraft.

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U.S. Soldier in South Korea Has Active Duty Military's First Case of Coronavirus

A U.S. soldier stationed at Camp Carroll in South Korea has tested positive for
the novel coronavirus, known officially as COVID-19, officials with U.S.
Forces-Korea announced the night of Feb. 25. It's the first confirmed case of
the disease in a U.S. service member.

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Arms Control Decisions by Trump Administration Could Be ‘Imminent.’ Will China Be Involved?

With a major arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia set to expire
next February, members of the nonproliferation community have been watching for
signs that negotiations may begin in earnest. For those observers, some welcome
news: Movement on the Trump administration’s arms control plan is
“imminent,” according to a senior defense official familiar with internal
administration discussions. However, what that looks like appears to be up in
the air: a short-term extension of the New START agreement with Russia;
something that involves nuclear-armed China; a combination of those two; or all
parties walking away entirely.

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Thousands of Wright-Patt Jobs Will Open in Coming Years

Even as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, adds missions and units, a
sizeable slice of its working population is approaching retirement age.
Considering all base units, 41 percent of the base’s civilian workforce will
be eligible to retire within five years, said Jessica Salyers, director of
special programs and projects at the Air Force Research Laboratory, part of a
team overseeing 6,400 skilled science and engineering employees working with a
$5 billion annual budget.

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First Woman Set to Pass Special Forces Training and Join Green Berets

An enlisted soldier, she is expected to graduate from the highly selective Green
Beret qualification course as a Special Forces engineer sergeant.

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No F-35s over Boise, as Air Force Drops City from ‘Alternate’ Consideration

A long push for stationing a fleet of F-35A jets at Gowen Field is over.

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Cyber Attack Attempts on Judiciary Top 24 Million, Congress Told

Cyber attack attempts targeting the federal judiciary have risen sharply in
recent years to more than 24 million in 2019, and some incidents have been tied
to other nations, judiciary officials said in congressional testimony.

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One More Thing...
New Matchbox “Top Gun: Maverick”-Themed Line Reveals Shape of Movie’s Mysterious Hypersonic Aircraft

We now have a better idea of what the hypersonic test airplane teased by the
trailer might look like. And there’s also a Sukhoi Su-57 Felon-like die-cast
model in the set.

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