Air Force Magazine
Daily Report for April 22, 2020

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Edited by Amy McCullough with Rachel S. Cohen, Brian W. Everstine, Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory and John A. Tirpak

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USAF Colonel on Night of Al-Asad Attack: ‘I Didn’t Believe Anyone Would Survive’
By Brian W. Everstine

The 80 Airmen hovered in bunkers on Jan. 7, 2020, weren't sure they would live
through the night. The sky glowed and the ground “shook with a force
impossible to put into words," as Iranian ballistic missiles rained down on
al-Asad Air Base, Iraq. Air Forces Central Command on April 7 published detailed
recollections from more than 20 Airmen who survived the attack, launched to
revenge the death of Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani. “I was being forced
to gamble with my members’ lives by something I couldn’t control,” Lt.
Col. Staci Coleman, commander of the 443th Air Expeditionary Squadron at the
base. “I was deciding who would live and who would die. I honestly thought
anyone remaining behind would perish. I didn’t believe anyone would survive a
ballistic missile attack, and it made me feel sick and helpless."

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Eielson Receives PACAF’s First Two F-35s
By Amy McCullough

The first F-35 Joint Strike Fighters landed at Eielson Air Force, Alaska, on
April 21, marking a historic shift for the 354th Fighter Wing, which will now
take on a combat mission in addition to its role training U.S. and partner
forces through major exercises like Red Flag-Alaska. “They are on their way
and we are ecstatic,” 354th FW Commander Col. Ben Bishop told Air Force
Magazine shortly after the jets embarked on the six-hour flight from Lockheed
Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility to their new home base. The wing is
slated to receive three F-35s in April, and it will ramp up to two squadrons of
strike fighters by the end of 2021, increasing Eielson’s total fleet from 30
aircraft to 84. “Once the beddown is complete, with 54 aircraft, the state of
Alaska will have the highest concentration of combat-coded fifth generation
aircraft than anywhere else in the Department of Defense,” said Bishop,
referencing the F-22 Raptors based at nearby Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson,
Alaska.

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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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Emerging Lunar Intelligence Field to Shape Space Ops
By Rachel S. Cohen

The Space Force has ambitious plans to support American companies and astronauts
as they try to return to—and set up shop on—the moon. But to succeed, the
military first needs to understand more about what's near Earth’s only natural
satellite. Rhea Space Activity, a Washington-based space technology and policy
startup, will lead a project to create the field of “lunaspatial
intelligence” (LUNINT), the collection of intelligence data on activity in
cislunar orbit and on the moon’s surface, for the Department of the Air Force.
The $50,000 contract is small in the scheme of DOD funding, but could have an
outsize impact in utility for the new space age.

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NORTHCOM Strives for Zero Risk in ‘No Fail’ Missions During Pandemic
By Brian W. Everstine

U.S. Northern Command is protecting its critical, “no fail” crews by having
them live in isolation so it can focus on protecting them and the nation amid
the new coronavirus outbreak, the head of the command said April 21. NORTHCOM is
working to “drive our risk down to zero” for service members, including
fighter pilots on alert for the homeland defense mission and personnel who
operate ballistic missile defense radars, USAF Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy
told reporters during a teleconference. “Some areas where we have very little
redundancy in, we don’t have multiple different options to perform a mission,
then we are literally driving that so there is no chance of a COVID-19 impact to
them,” O’Shaughnessy said.

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USAF Helps Navy Gear Up to Treat Evacuated Sailors in Guam
By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

The Air Force’s 36th Wing recently teamed up with Joint Base
Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, to set
up an expeditionary medical facility at U.S. Naval Hospital Guam to treat U.S.
Navy sailors evacuated from their COVID-19-ravaged aircraft carrier, according
to a USAF release. The system being set up on the naval hospital’s grounds
contains medical and warehouse units. It will provide 25 more beds for COVID-19
patients and storage space for medical equipment used to treat them. USAF is
also providing 77 personnel to staff the expeditionary medical facility.

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Lockheed May Still Play a Role in Upgrading Raytheon LRSO, Once it’s Operational
By John A. Tirpak

Once the Raytheon AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff missile is operational, Lockheed
Martin may play a role in upgrading its sensors or contributing other expertise
even though the company was passed over to build the weapon, the Air Force said.
The decision to focus on Raytheon for further design work followed program
design reviews of both candidate systems, USAF reported. Money that was not used
on Lockheed's design may help accelerate the program.

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Virtual Events Calendar: Mark Lewis on ‘Aerospace Nation,’ and More
By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Today, Mark Lewis, the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering
for modernization, will appear in a virtual conversation with retired USAF Lt.
Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute for
Aerospace Studies, in the fourth installment of the think tank's "Aerospace
Nation" series. A replay of the conversation will be available online later that
day on Mitchell's <a
href="[link removed]"> website</a>.

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Radar Sweep

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U.S. Closely Monitoring Reports on Kim Jong Un's Health, National Security Adviser Says

National security adviser Robert O'Brien confirmed April 21 the Trump
administration is "keeping a close eye" on reports regarding North Korean leader
Kim Jong Un's health, and assured Americans the nation's intelligence community
remains focused on external threats amid the new coronavirus pandemic.

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Snapshot: DOD and COVID-19

Here's a look at how the Defense Department is being impacted by and responding
to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Air Force’s 'Fired Up Chief' Survives a Serious Bout with Coronavirus

Retired Air Force Command Chief Master Sgt. Juan Lewis is usually the one
encouraging his tens of thousands of followers on social media and others in
person to be positive and resilient in the face of life’s challenges. But over
the past few weeks, Lewis—who’s widely known as the “Fired Up Chief” for
the uplifting talks he gave to Airmen, starting when he was a command chief at
Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas—was the one in need of support and
motivation as he fought for his life after contracting the new coronavirus.

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VA and DOD Now Default to Sharing Patient Data with Private-Sector Providers

While many of the central projects under the Veterans Affairs and Defense
Departments’ concurrent electronic health records rollouts are being delayed
to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, the joint program office reached a major
data-sharing milestone on April 18. The joint Federal Electronic Health Record
Modernization, or FEHRM, program office stood up the DOD and VA Health
Information Exchange, which will allow medical providers at both agencies to
share patient data with private-sector health care organizations, such as
specialists and urgent care clinics.

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Defense Department Study Calls for Cutting 2 of the U.S. Navy’s Aircraft Carriers

An internal Office of the Secretary of Defense assessment calls for the Navy to
cut two aircraft carriers from its fleet, freeze the large surface combatant
fleet of destroyers and cruisers around current levels, and add dozens of
unmanned or lightly manned ships to the inventory, according to documents
obtained by Defense News.

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Iran’s Guard Says It Has Higher Range Anti-Warship Missiles

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Guard Corps. announced on April 20 it
has significantly upgraded the range of its anti-warship missiles, the state-run
news agency reported. The IRGC says it now possesses surface-to-surface and
subsurface anti-warship missiles with a range as high as 700 kilometers (430
miles), according to its top naval officer, Adm. Ali Reza Tangsiri.

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OPINION: The Defense Department Needs a Real Technology Strategy

“To succeed in a long-term competition with China, the Defense Department
needs a transparent process to set spending priorities—not conflicting
guidance and a shifting range of interests,” writes Paul Scharre, a senior
fellow and director of the Technology and National Security Program at the
Center for a New American Security, and Ainikki Riikonen, research assistant
with CNAS’ Technology and National Security Program.

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One More Thing...
Watch Belgian Air Force F-16s Intercept Russian Fighters Flying Over the USS Donald Cook Destroyer in the Baltic Sea

According to the Allied Air Command, “the Russian fighters were maneuvering in
international airspace overflying the USS Donald Cook, a U.S. Navy 6th Fleet
destroyer currently operating in the Baltic Sea off the Lithuanian coast. The
Belgian F-16 conducted a professional intercept and left the scene,
demonstrating that NATO remains ready, vigilant, and prepared to respond to any
potential threat.”

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