Air Force IR Sensor Delivered for Hosting on SES Satellite

SAIC has delivered an infrared sensor for Air Force use that will be integrated into and hosted on the commercial SES-2 satellite.  The SES-2 satellite is being built by Orbital Sciences and will provide commercial communications services.

The short and medium wave infrared sensor gets a lower-cost ride to space than a dedicated IR satellite and could be on orbit as early as around this time in 2011.

Called CHIRP (the Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload), the sensor assembly will provide wide field-of-view persistent infrared capabilities.

When the sensor is on-orbit, it will have a secure, two-way communication channel to the Air Force through a standard commercial telecommunication transponder.

Revised USAF Launch Manifest Strategy

EELVs Provide Margin; Margin Allows For Scheduling Flexibility

I think the new strategy–basically to match a spacecraft to a boosters six to twelve months out based on spacecraft readiness–is enabled by the studly to-orbit capabilities of the Delta IV and Atlas V EELV vehicles.

I’m guessing both families of boosters have enough margin that they can wait until later in the scheduling process to be matched with a spacecraft versus the traditional way of  matching much earlier on based on which booster was the best fit (or the only fit) to get a particular satellite on orbit.

This flexibility allows a spacecraft to go to either a Delta IV or an Atlas V and avoids committing to one versus the other two years in advance.

The idea makes plenty of sense.  The only ones who might lose out will be those secondary and orphan types of payloads looking for a cheap(er) ride to space.

Defense Industry Braces For Cuts

Somebody got some ‘splainin’ to do.

The WSJ reports $100 billion in defense cuts–about 90 percent in the years beyond FY12 for the purpose of getting the budget under better control.

Concurrently, $50 billion of current year non-defense spending is proposed.

Is it me?

Regarding the proposed cuts to the defense industry, a dilemma remains excess global capacity. That’s why Airbus is considering the USAF tanker deal anew.  But excess capacity almost by definitional means consolidation can (or should) be pursued in order to achieve greater efficiencies.

Then, consolidation leads to a loss of competition.  A loss of competition leads to higher costs.  That’s what happened with EELV, where dreamy assumptions melted in the face of global reality (that is, global reality versus global warming).

The traditional take is for governments, U.S. included, to subsidize industry.

Using the automotive industry, consider the relatively recent cash for clunkers and the GM and Chrysler bailouts.

USAF Plans For Reusable Booster

Groan.  Wasn’t the shuttle a reusable booster?  Didn’t EELV promise cost savings?

Here’s the link to the Aviation Week article…

When I read about savings of over 50%, I think about EELV and the cost savings it was asserted to create.  EELV was a massive ‘cost avoidance’ program, that is, by creating and using new families of launch vehicles, the USAF could get away from brutally expensive ‘heritage’ systems like the Titan IV.

Of course, the savings–the cost avoidance–never materialized.  Paper rockets are cheap and things cost more and more as they move further away from Powerpoint.

EELV’s cost problem was rooted in the bogus assumption there would be lots of EELV launches and ergo, plenty of cost sharing and a low per-unit expense. These were, of course, all wrong.  Its advocates didn’t see that foreign launch competitors, with advantageous labor rates, subsidization, and greatly reduced regulatory entanglements, would end up as the  way for commercial users to go.

Give the SpaceX and Microcosms of the world a chance to compete.  Reusable if it makes sense, expendable if it doesn’t.

X-37B Launch

Yes, the USAF X-37 space mission has launched.  Go Atlas, go Centaur, go X-37.

Is this all supposed to coincide with Earth Day?  After all, the X-37 is a reusable vehicle…of course, in theory, so is the shuttle.

Speaking of the shuttle, lost in the noise is the fact that the space shuttle Atlantis has been rolled out for its last scheduled mission.

Lotsa link action and much of it is focused on the fact no one in the Air Force is talking about the payload itself.  If it had been a NASA mission to track algae blooms in the south China sea, interest would be nil.  As for me, I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of large red algae blooms in the south China sea.

From the mighty Spaceflight Now.

From the always interesting In From the Cold.

From the Daily Mail (checkout the unretouched photo of Kate Moss while you’re there).

For some program background, how about Aviation Week?

Ground Control To Major Bomb

Feel free to laugh your guts out or at least to chuckle knowingly at this article in the CSM Air Force to launch X-37 space plane: Precursor to war in orbit?

For example:

“For the first time, the service will launch the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, a brand new, unmanned spacecraft to demonstrate the military’s ability to fly into space, circle the globe for months on end, and return intact, only to fly again.”

Or better:

“Arms control advocates say it is pretty clearly the beginning of a “weaponization of space” – precursor to a precision global strike capability that would allow the US to hover for months at a time over anywhere it chose with little anyone could do about it.”

Or even:

“…one of the inherent values of the X-37 could be as a maneuverable satellite which could be used to look over China’s shoulder one day, yet evade any attempts to shoot it down.”

While you are free to discuss amongst yourselves, here are my thoughts:

1. The shuttle was able to circle the globe.
2. The shuttle was reusable.
3. The Soviets thought the shuttle should be characterized as a space weapon.
4. If the shuttle didn’t have people on board, it could have orbited (not hovered!) for years on end.
5. In space, no one can hear you hover–there is no “hovering” in space.  Star Trek “orbits’ (yes, those are irony quotes) don’t work.
6. It takes a great deal of energy to move an orbiting object–evading (as in “Maverick, look out!”) ain’t happening.

Carpe hover or “seize the space hook.”

Space Security Programs of Interest

Remember the golden rule of just about everything: if it ain’t funded, it ain’t.  While policy is interesting, it is actually revealed in what gets–or doesn’t get–funded.

This analysis is basically appears to largely be putting a number of the budgetary requirements documents (known as r-docs) into a table and providing commentary from the respective r-docs’ word pictures.

The trends: space control, counterspace, and operationally responsive space are down.  Space situational awareness–supported in part by the separately funded space fence–is headed way up.  Also some serious growth in a couple of MDA’s classified PEs and finally, directed energy is (surprisingly) stayin’ alive.

The Toyota – Air Force Nuclear Enterprise Analogy

This article originally appeared in Air University’s The Wright Stuff.

The Toyota – Air Force Nuclear Enterprise Analogy

By Mark Stout & Larry Chandler

Although Toyota is one of the world’s premier manufacturers, they are now dealing with an intense threat to their credibility.  At the heart of the issue are concerns about the quality and safety of Toyota products.  In the U.S., at least 52 people have died in accidents thought to be related to unintended and sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles.  These problems have resulted in public apologies in both Beijing and Washington by Toyota’s President, Akio Toyoda, and worldwide, over 8 million Toyotas have been recalled.

In the Air Force, there is an analogous credibility challenge which thankfully hasn’t killed anybody, but is none-the-less significant.  That challenge remains the USAF’s nuclear enterprise.* If the efficacy of the AF’s nuclear endeavors are being accurately measured by Air Force and Department of Defense inspection teams, the nuclear enterprise remains in a very unhealthy condition.

While the details and specific errors have not been announced, the Air Force Times relayed a statement that Malmstrom Air Force Base’s 341^st Missile Wing and the its 16^th Munitions Squadron both failed their February 2010 nuclear surety inspections.  The Air Force response, as reported in the Washington Post, was that “There were no critical deficiencies noted. The wing is still fully able, in the eyes of the inspector general team, to conduct its mission safely, securely and with credibility” and that the public is in no way endangered by these failures.  OK, I’ll accept the later, but if there were no critical deficiencies, why didn’t they pass?

The not-critical-but-somehow-unqualifying errors at Malmstrom were preceded by a different unsatisfactory performance at Kirtland Air Force Base in November 2009.  There, both the 377th Air Base Wing and the 498th Nuclear Systems Wing received unsatisfactory grades for problems in the personnel reliability program, nuclear weapons maintenance operations, and nuclear weapons security procedures.  In late January 2010, while preparing for its obligatory 90-day recheck inspection, a HQ AFMC staff assistance team found the unit had not corrected the problems from their failed November NSI.  This was so unexpected that HQ Air Force Materiel Command conducted a separate “Over-watch” of the staff assistance findings, which were validated. As a result, the Kirtland (Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center) leadership took the very unusual step of a sort of ‘self-initiated nuclear decertification.’ Strange days, indeed.

So how do the problems at Toyota and in the Air Force’s nuclear enterprise fit together?  Toyota watcher and author Robert Cole, writing in the Harvard Business Review, has detailed several of the manufacturer’s problems which appear to have direct applicability to the USAF’s nuclear enterprise.  Broadly, these problems have to do with organizational goals and incentives and (forgive the cliché) unintended consequences.

An often unspoken but ever-present organizational goal is to be relevant— after all, an irrelevant organization will soon cease to exist.  In 1992, the Air Force faced new challenges to its relevance, shaped in large part by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, and in no small part by the AF’s own success in Desert Storm earlier that same year.  Following these events, USAF leaders attempted to make the Air Force ever more relevant by focusing additional organizational effort and resources on conventional capabilities (like stealthy aircraft, “smart munitions”, and the space-enabled successes demonstrated in Desert Storm) and less on its nuclear enterprise.   In many ways, 1992 can be summed up in what Robert McNamara observed following the Cuban Missile Crisis: conventional forces were the spear and nuclear forces the shield, although in the 1990s, the shield was certain to get a lot smaller.

Between Desert Storm and the fall of the Soviet Union, President George H.W. Bush unilaterally de-alerted the USAF’s nuclear bomber fleet along with 450 Minuteman II ICBMs in September 1991, providing the Soviets, in the words of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney “the incentive they need to shift their country away from the business of cranking out nuclear weapons and toward the work of building democracy.”  With the Department of Defense expected to pay much of the anticipated “peace dividend,” something had to give and one of the bill-payers would be the USAF’s nuclear enterprise.

The flip side of the story of this rapid contraction and associated de-emphasis on the Air Force’s nuclear enterprise was Toyota’s rapid expansion.  In 1998, Toyota set off to enhance its relevance in the global automotive industry with the aim of doubling their global market share.  As an organizational goal, this large increase in market share would entail a number of things: more people working on a broader product line; selling more; manufacturing more (and in different places); bringing products from development to market more quickly; and, sustaining the famous Toyota reputation for quality.  Additionally, the market-share goal could be easily measured, observed, and tracked, but as Cole notes, Toyota’s traditional mantras like “Customer First” had a way of yielding when in conflict with the primary target of increased market share.  After all, what gets rewarded is what gets done.

Instead, Toyota’s rapid market expansion diluted the experience levels of its managers just as the Air Force’s focus on conventional conflicts pulled human and fiscal resources away from a well-established and mature nuclear enterprise.  At Toyota, Cole observed these changes drove massive increases in engineering man-hours, particularly in integration and joint software development.  He adds that overworked people, engineers in this case, tend to make mistakes and that inside Toyota, it is said to take about ten years to develop a fully capable engineer.

As alluded to, the Air Force’s experience was Toyota’s in reverse: rapid contraction instead of rapid expansion.  With the USAF ICBM force, for example, the aforementioned 450 Minuteman IIs were depostured, including removing all weapons, ICBM components, the missiles themselves, and more.  Later, all 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs were also depostured and taken out of the inventory.  In between, 150 Minuteman IIIs from a BRAC’d base were depostured and moved from one base to a separate base in another state and repostured.  Throughout, the Minuteman III system went from a multiple warhead configuration to a single warhead configuration (including using recycled re-entry vehicles that once resided on Peacekeeper ICBMs).  Along the way, a huge Minuteman III life extension program refurbished or remanufactured the missile from “nosecone to nozzle.”  All these actions required a massive amount of effort, including literally millions of miles of travel, and work throughout the far-flung missile fields of Missouri, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado.

While all this was happening, the traditional ICBM maintenance required to inspect and repair missiles, weapons, facilities and support equipment continued unabated.  And what happened to Airmen manning in the missile maintenance and missile operations officer career fields?  You got it…it decreased.  If many hands make the load light, fewer hands are certain to make the load heavier, all other things being equal.

A separate but contributing move that reduced corporate nuclear knowledge was the 1991 merger of the munitions maintenance officer and aircraft maintenance officer career fields.  At the time, this move drove 250 munitions officers into a larger sea of 1750 “general purpose logistics” officers and clearly reduced the opportunities to develop comprehensive and in-depth munitions expertise.  Because the activities at a Weapons Storage Area comprise about three-quarters of the Nuclear Weapons Technical Inspection criteria, having experienced and capable munitions officers is essential.  This was eloquently forewarned by Major General (Retired) Lew Curtis, the San Antonio Air Logistics Center Commander, who in 1987 said “We have learned through long and bitter experience that nuclear logistics operations demand experience and technical expertise far beyond that required for general maintenance of even non-nuclear munitions.”

So, just as at Toyota, it seems there were too few experienced people doing too much in too short a time and both the Air Force and Toyota underestimated the challenges of these highly complex endeavors.  Airmen may have become experts in depostures and repostures while perhaps losing the habits of mind and the knowledge and experience required to achieve daily and sustained excellence in aircraft, missile and nuclear weapons operations.

These complex problems are reminiscent of Steven Covey’s law of the farm, that is, you reap what you sow.  When Toyota placed market share as a pre-eminent goal, a cascade of unintended consequences followed.  In hindsight, it seems obvious Toyota’s rapid expansion might well affect the quality of its product.  Similarly, when the Air Force de-emphasized nuclear weapons maintenance and operations while concurrently increasing the nuclear weapon systems’ maintenance workload, a weakening of the entire enterprise was bound to occur.

Many nuclear-experienced and capable Airmen could read the writing on the wall and pursued other career opportunities.  For bomber crews and staff, this became a focus on conventional capabilities.  For many ICBM crews and staff, the focus often moved to positions in the space arena.  For ICBM maintenance, nuclear weapons, and security personnel, it meant separating from the Air Force or training into other specialties, especially those involved with the flight line, fighter aircraft, and deployments.  For the Air Force, it appears to have taken about fifteen years to reach a nuclear enterprise “Tipping Point” marked by the inadvertent movement of six nuclear weapons from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale AFB in 2007 and a separate event involving incorrectly shipping nuclear-related ICBM components to Taiwan.  Through most of the interim years from the end of the Cold War until these times, despite benign neglect, a loss of experience combined, and expanding workloads, the nuclear enterprise was still managed effectively by the experienced officers and NCOs who had resisted or avoided the career enhancing push to “career – broaden,” remaining in the nuclear weapons career fields. But when these Airmen finally left the service, the safety net of experience and expertise unraveled.  Still, if this is now so obvious, why did it happen?  Perhaps it relates back to something attributed to Winston Churchill: no job is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it.

After an Air Force Chief of Staff and a Secretary of the Air Force were relieved following the Minot to Barksdale and the disassociated-but-relevant Taiwan incidents, new leadership established the goal of “Reinvigorating the AF Nuclear Enterprise” asthe Air Force’s top priority.  Recently, that goal was subtly changed and is now described as Continue To Strengthen The Air Force Nuclear Enterprise.    Based on the recent inspection results at the nuclear units, it appears we can legitimately question if we are addressing the underlying root causes of the Minot and Taiwan incidents.   While Toyota is important, a compliant (that is, safe, secure, and reliable) USAF nuclear enterprise is essential.

Mark Stout is a researcher at Air University’s National Space Studies Center.  Mr. Stout sometimes posts at the blog Songs of Space and Nuclear War.  Larry Chandler is a retired Air Force Colonel working on the effort to revitalize the USAF Nuclear Enterprise.  The opinions expressed here are those of the authors’ alone and may not reflect the views and policies of the US Air Force or the Department of Defense.

* Even though the term ‘nuclear enterprise’ lacks total precision, it is intended to represent the totality of what the Air Force does regarding anything nuclear to include operations, logistics, security, modernization, delivery vehicles, and weapons.

Why Not Minot?

While Afghanistan has been described as the graveyard of empires, Minot Air Force Base has become the graveyard of military careers.  How so, you say?  Well, another wing commander has fallen at Minot but this time it’s the bomb wing commander.  If I have the count right, that’s two Minot wing commanders, a group commander, and a squadron commander that we know of in a month.

Perhaps the mythical Frank Savage should be recalled to active duty and placed in command at Minot.  Of course, the fictional Savage had to deal with the 918^th Bomb Group’s poor performance and its psychological manifestation, fear (or maybe those are reversed) in the classic World War II flick 12 O’Clock High.  However, if Frank Savage was at Minot, what challenges would he have to deal with? 

In the most recent case, most of what’s been said refers to the traditional ‘loss of confidence in the individual’s ability to command and lead.’  By the way, this commander had been in place just short of two years and himself relieved a fallen wing commander.  It’s been said sunlight is the best disinfectant–we need some serious sunlight pouring into what’s going on at Minot if for no other reason than to serve as a case study in understanding what went wrong and to consider what we might do differently in the future.

As 12 O’clock High unfolds, Savage comes to possess a great deal of empathy for the aircrews under his command.  In fact, it hits him so hard at the end of the story that it literally causes him to lock up and quit functioning.  Tough leadership, practice, and changed methods brought great improvements in Savage’s bomb group, but in the end, his loss-of-function hearkens to a couple of well-known quotes that have some Minot applicability.  The first is attributed to Henry Ford, who proclaimed “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.”  The second is from Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.”

Today, I’m sure there are lots of Minotians who are wondering if they can make it through a year’s worth of daily activities, let alone some rigorous major inspections, without finding themselves in trouble.  Likewise, there are lots of nuclear critics pointing out strong men stumbling and deeds that could have been done better.  However, since the Air Force often characterizes promotions as ‘recognition of the ability to perform at the next higher grade,’ were these individuals at Minot all promoted beyond their ability?  That seems unlikely but does raise the issue of more leadership and process adjustments the Air Force may need to make in this regard.  Were the individuals relieved inadequate in their performance, or were they simply challenged to play the poor hands they had been dealt to the best of their abilities?  The challenges in leading large organizations are myriad, but especially true is the fact you can greatly influence people but you can’t control them. 

It would appear Minot typifies the sticky situation the Air Force has gotten itself in over the last fifteen-plus years.  Even though restoring the nuclear enterprise is a critical USAF goal, long periods of neglect have led to the experience cupboard being bare and the bench being empty.  If that’s true, I’ll propose a heretical solution: bring in some F-15 and F-16 drivers in leadership roles to try and fix Minot’s shortcomings.  Or alternatively, how about some civil engineers or support officers?  After all, if the bomber and missile guys aren’t getting it done, give someone else a chance.  Too often it seems the traditional mutual fund caveat applies to leadership, that is, ‘past performance may not be indicative of future returns.’ 

The Air Force needs to ask itself if the right people are actually getting into leadership positions, and not just nuclear.  Institutionally, it does not appear to be an easy question to answer.  When an NFL owner is unhappy with a team’s performance, the coach or general manager is likely to get fired.  Why?  First, because it’s impossible to fire an entire team and second, owners don’t fire themselves.  The call-back to ‘Why not Minot?’ has historically been ‘Freezins’ the reason.’  Today, air temperatures, while still important, are subsumed by more essential issues.

Compare and Contrast

Here are some observations I’ve made on the past, present, and possible future of the USAF’s nuclear enterprise.

Here is Brigadier General Joseph D. Brown IV’s take on my take as seen in Air University’s current The Wright Stuff.

Enjoy!