C U R R E N T N E W S F A L C O N C L I P S Sept. 16, 2013
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DoD's Link: http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2013/0213_sequestration/
OPM's Link on Administrative Furloughs: http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay- leave/furlough-guidance/#url=Administrative-Furlough
AF Portal Link for Sequestration: https://www.my.af.mil/gcss- af/USAF/ep/globalTab.do?channelPageId=sA4057E1F3CE4E6AB013D02ED7E4902B1
AIR FORCE ACADEMY
Cadets honor 108 who passed on Colorado Springs Gazette; Sept. 15, 2013 Most schools celebrate homecoming with a pep rally.
ACADEMY SPORTS
Fencers did battle and won! Nick Toth Open came to a close today at the Academy GoAirForceFalcons.com; Sept. 15, 2013 The Air Force women fencers did battle and won! The Nick Toth Open drew to a close today, Sunday, Sept. 15, at the Academy with several women's fencers taking top places. In a hard fought Women's Senior Foil competition, Mary McElwee was a two-time champion in the senior and junior foil tournaments. Madeleine Girardot took second in senior foil and Alisa Chernomashentsev tied for third place in seniors. In Senior Women's Saber, Alyssa Hofilena took second and Desirae Ionata tied for third place.
Falcons Win Two at Home on Saturday Colorado Springs Gazette; Sept. 14, 2013 The Air Force women’s tennis team won two matches at home Saturday, defeating CSU- Pueblo, 6-1, and Metro State, 7-0. The Falcons improved to 4-0 this season.
Calhoun would like to see redshirts at academy Colorado Springs Gazette; Sept. 15, 2013 Boise State and Utah State have systematically handled Air Force in the past two weeks, outscoring the Falcons 94-40 and launching a combined two punts.
AIR FORCE
Welsh: Scarce Resources Must Go To Core Missions Air Force Times; Sept 23, 2013 Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh has a lot to contend with — an aging fleet of aircraft, an uncertain fiscal future and the possibility that the Air Force will be needed for an operation in Syria.
US Air Force Weighs Scrapping KC-10s, A-10s, F-15Cs, New CSAR Helicopters Defense News; Sept 16, 2013 WASHINGTON — Faced with steep budget cuts and the desire to keep existing procurement initiatives on track, the US Air Force is considering scrapping its entire fleet of KC-10 tankers and A-10 attack jets, according to multiple military and defense sources.
AFA Air & Space Conference comes to AF.mil Air Force News Service; Sept. 13, 2013 FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. (AFNS) -- A new iteration of the Air Force Association’s annual Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition is set to take place Sept. 16-18 at National Harbor, Md.
AF publishes list of sex assault convictions Air Force Times; Sep. 13, 2013 A newly published Air Force document includes all sexual assault convictions from 2010 through August of this year. It marks the first time the service has attempted to release such a list as it faces criticism for its handling of sex assault cases.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Cyber Security: The New Arms Race For A New Front Line Christian Science Monitor’ Sept. 15, 2013 Wall Township, N.J.--In the eastern New Jersey suburbs, a train carrying radiological material is barreling toward a small town, and it is up to Pentagon cyber-operators to derail it. The town is the kind of idyllic whistle-stop hamlet where residents socialize at a cafe with complimentary Wi-Fi while surfing FaceSpace, a social networking site.
SEQUESTRATION
DoD Will 'Aggressively' Target Compensation Army Times; Sept. 23, 2013 As the Defense Department maps out plans to absorb long-term budget cuts, military compensation and troop levels are among the primary targets, the Pentagon’s top financial officer said.
Obama, GOP in showdown over government shutdown Stars and Stripes; Sept. 15, 2013 WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Sunday vowed anew to reject any fiscal negotiations with congressional Republicans that include the federal debt ceiling, setting up a showdown over the debt limit that the U.S. government is expected to reach in a month.
GRADUATES
A first for academy graduate Colorado Springs Gazette; Sept. 15, 2013 An Air Force Academy graduate and Air Force reservist marked another first in his pro football career this month when he started the season on an NFL roster.
OPINION/EDITORIAL
Council: Support City for Champions proposal Colorado Springs Gazette;Sept. 16, 2013 An open letter to City Council members Joel Miller, Keith King, Andy Pico, Don Knight and Helen Collins:
OF INTEREST
Local hero recalls month as a POW Colorado Springs Gazette; Sept. 16, 2013 Bobby Goodman has no opinion of U.S. military involvement in Syria. Colorado Springs Gazette Sept. 15, 2013
Cadets honor 108 who passed on
Annual rite helps AFA understand what sacrifice is
By Tom Roeder
Most schools celebrate homecoming with a pep rally.
For the past 49 years, cadets at the Air Force Academy have marked homecoming with a memorial service for academy alums who died in the past year — 108 this time.
The Sept. 6 sunset ceremony has as much tradition as the raucous rites of other schools. And officials say it brings deeper meaning.
“Homecoming isn’t homecoming here like you think,” academy spokesman John Van Winkle said. “There’s no homecoming queen or bonfire.”
The academy’s 4,000 cadets gathered in formation for a roll call of the fallen.
As each name was read, the cry of “absent” echoed across the campus.
Academy officials say the annual rite is crucial to honor the fallen and to help future officers understand the meaning of sacrifice.
“They need to understand what service is all about,” said Chief Master Sgt. Steven Ludwig, the academy’s top enlisted airman.
Those remembered ranged from graduates of the academy’s first class in 1959 to one member of the Class of 2013.
Two died at war overseas.
Capt. Victoria Pinckney and Capt. Tyler Voss, who both called Colorado Springs home, died in the May crash of a refueling plane in Kyrgyzstan.
Another remembered was the academy’s first black graduate, Charles V. Bush of the Class of 1963. After serving in Vietnam, Bush went on to success in business and as a consultant and speaker. He died Nov. 5 in Montana.
Senior cadet Joel Cramer said the ceremony gives his classmates a lot to think about. The 108 people remembered at the ceremony were shown in a program with their cadet portraits. Their names were called by cadet squadron. Some made it to general. Others died as cadets.
“It helps you to think that they were where I am right now,” Cramer said.
The service took an hour and ended with taps. Family members of the fallen watched their kin get a final salute from 4,000 cadets.
Army Chief Warrant Officer Frank Grulkowski was there to remember his niece, Pinckney. The ceremony brought a single word to his mind.
“Honor,” he said, as tears filled his eyes. GoAirForceFalcons.com Sept. 15, 2013
Fencers did battle and won! Nick Toth Open came to a close today at the Academy
The Air Force women fencers did battle and won! The Nick Toth Open drew to a close today, Sunday, Sept. 15, at the Academy with several women's fencers taking top places. In a hard fought Women's Senior Foil competition, Mary McElwee was a two-time champion in the senior and junior foil tournaments. Madeleine Girardot took second in senior foil and Alisa Chernomashentsev tied for third place in seniors. In Senior Women's Saber, Alyssa Hofilena took second and Desirae Ionata tied for third place.
In the Junior Women's tournaments, Alyssa Hofilena took the gold in saber. In the finals for foil, it was McElwee, who won the championship title as Chernomashentsev was the runner up and Girardot tied for third place.
In senior women's foil, the Falcons participated in two pools, pool 1: Lauren Brooks, Waverly Hock and Mary McElwee. In pool 2, it was Madeleine Girardot, Alisa Chernomashentsev and Ashley Chung. In the semi bout it was Chernomashentsev against Girardot in pool 2.
Chernomashentsev brought it strong against her opponent with a two-point lead, but Girardot would answer causing a two-point tie in the first period. In the second period Girardot, who would not allow her teammate to score more than two touches began answering touch for touch against Chernomashentsev. With 14 seconds left in the second period, Girardot scored a tie (14- 14) and finally as time ran out, scored again for the 15-14 victory. "I am happy with Alisa's performance today as this is her first tournament to represent the Air Force`s Academy," said head coach Abdel Salem. "She showed good potential and we are happy to have her on the team."
In pool 1, McElwee went up against Albane Ricard (unattached) in the semi round. McElwee held the bout leading with 13-points to win the bout, 15-2.
In the gold medal bout it was McElwee versus Girardot. Girardot scored the first touch at the top of the first period, but McElwee would answer just as quickly. The pair kept the bout very close with no more than one touch apart. The first two periods ended with a 3-3 and 4-4 ties, respectively, as it appeared that the final period would end in a, 7-9, deficit in McElwee's favor. However, with 20 seconds on the clock, McElwee pulled a two-point lead and finally with only two seconds left, both fencers added one more touch each. But it was not enough for Girardot as McElwee scored another as the time ran out and won the bout 12-9. McElwee won the senior women's foil title, Girardot was the runner up and Chernomashentsev tied for third place.
"Women foil finished strong taking first, second and third place," said Salem. "You cannot do better than that. The three young ladies showed toughness, competitiveness, and determination to win."
The final placements in women's foil were McElwee, first, Girardot, second, Chernomashentsev, tied third, Hock, seventh, Brooks, 12th and Chung 13th.
The senior women's saber tournament consisted of one pool that included Allison Egan, Desirae Ionata, Stephanie Sarabia and Alyssa Hofilena. Hofilena advanced to the final bout after receiving a bye and a 15-4 win versus teammate Ionata. In DE's, Hofilena fought a tough battle against Micah Akard from New Mexico, but lost it, 11-15. Hofilena finished the day in second place at her first Nick Toth Open of her Academy career. Egan was knocked out of the DE's after losing to Ionata, 8-15. Egan finished fifth, while Ionata tied for third place after going 15-8, 4-15. Sarabia lost in the first round, 7-15, and finished in seventh place.
Competing in the senior women's epee class, were Jessica Steuber, Rachael Ferguson, Rachel Evans and Olivia Prosseda. The event had four pools going into direct elimination bouts (DE) in which the Air Force fencers competed. Prosseda advanced to the table 16 on a bye and then went 15-12. She advanced to the semi bout to compete against Jasmine Lambert from the Denver Fencing Club. Prosseda trailed Lambert by three points during the bout and lost it, 12-15. Prosseda finished the day in sixth place, Evans finished 16th, Steuber 21st and Ferguson finished tied for 24th place.
Junior Women's Competition Recap:
In the junior's, Hofilena took the gold after going 15-7, 15-11 in saber. Rachael Ferguson finished in seventh place in epee.
Competing in junior women's foil, it was McElwee, Chernomashentsev, Girardot and Hock, who was the seventh-place finisher. In the semi bout, McElwee fenced Ricard (unattached) and quickly knocked out her opponent, 15-10. Girardot and Chernomashentsev did battle in the semi as the match ended 15-12 in Chernomashentev's favor.
And then there were two, in the gold medal bout it was McElwee versus Chernomashentsev. At the start of the bout and with no touches made in the first 20 seconds of the first period, the referee advanced the bout to the second period as a result of non-combative activity. With half of the second gone, the score remained 0-0. Chernomashentsev scored a touch and McElwee quickly answered (1-1). The two scored again and at the end of the second period the bout was tied 2-2. Excitement drew as the pair started to go touch for touch in the third period until finally the bout ended in a 9-9 tie causing the fencers into overtime. In overtime, McElwee finished off her opponent 10-9 with only 22 seconds on the clock.
McElwee was the junior women's foil champion, Chernomashentsev was runner up and Girardot took third place.
Colorado Springs Gazette Sept. 14, 2013
Falcons Win Two at Home on Saturday
AFA defeats CSU-Pueblo and Metro State
The Air Force women’s tennis team won two matches at home Saturday, defeating CSU-Pueblo, 6-1, and Metro State, 7-0. The Falcons improved to 4-0 this season.
Air Force won all three doubles matches and the top five singles matches against CSU-Pueblo, then won all nine matches against Metro State. Senior Anastasia Hueffner, sophomore Mary Meyers and freshman Chloe Forlini each won two singles matches in straight sets.
“This was a great weekend for our players to get a lot of match play before heading to Navy this week,” said Air Force head coach Kim Gidley. “With eight freshmen and one sophomore we are a little bit on the young side. To get to play as many matches as we did this weekend gave some much needed experience to our team and allowed us to see how our players would compete against someone other than ourselves.”
The Falcons travel to Annapolis, Md., next weekend for the Navy Invitational beginning on Friday, Sept. 20. Colorado Springs Gazette Sept. 15, 2013
Calhoun would like to see redshirts at academy
By Brent Briggeman
Boise State and Utah State have systematically handled Air Force in the past two weeks, outscoring the Falcons 94-40 and launching a combined two punts.
Why is that? At least part of the reasoning could be attributed to what Air Force coach Troy Calhoun pointed to as the major difference between the programs.
Boise State had 22 former redshirts among the 27 players appearing on its offensive depth chart. Utah State had similar numbers.
The Falcons do not have a redshirt program , but Calhoun believes they should. He believes it to much he spent about 10 minutes of his most recent midweek news conference talking about the subject.
“You can’t do it only for the athletic component, that’s not why you do it,” Calhoun said. “You do it because in the long haul there’s a greater growth when it comes to character and leadership experiences that makes you even sounder, more fit and even a better leader when you’re on active duty.”
Calhoun pointed to many areas in which a ninth semester would enhance a cadet’s experience at the academy. It would offer another summer and the opportunity to be part of leadership programs around the globe or serve as cadre in basic training. Also, athletes would have the opportunity to lower their class load during the season — taking perhaps 15-to-18 credit hours instead of 18-to-21 — and have a more focused academic experience. “Initially as a taxpayer you say, ‘I don’t know; I don’t want to pay for another semester,’” Calhoun said. “But when you a little bit bigger picture and the longterm benefits, you realize, ‘Gosh, it makes too much sense.’”
Calhoun was clear that his hope to add a redshirt program at Air Force was strictly his own wish and that no discussions with upper brass had taken place. He would want the potential ninth semester used on a case-by-case basis and not for every cadet. He said women’s athletics would see perhaps the biggest benefit from the change.
Women’s basketball coach Andrea Williams said she understood how Calhoun had drawn his conclusions.
“The things we deal with that other schools don’t sometimes is that time management and squeezing everything in in an afternoon and how that fits with military and everything and playing a Division I and Mountain West schedule,” Williams said.
Williams agreed with Calhoun that extra time at the academy would offer more opportunities. She said several of her players expressed disappointment in missing the chance to earn jump wings at the airfield, but time constraints wouldn’t allow for it. “I would love more time with any kids I brought on campus, more years with them around the program,” Williams said. “Who wouldn’t? That’s why we recruit them. You recruit good kids and you want to be around them, that’s why you recruit them.”
Football players weren’t so sure they’d want another summer and semester at the academy.
“Once you get here, you kind of want to graduate as soon as possible,” junior running back Jon Lee. “It would be easier, academic-wise, but just being able to graduate that much sooner has a plus too.”
Added offensive lineman Jerry Henry: “I went to the prep school, so that was kind of like my redshirt year. I kind of got acclimated to the offense there.”
Calhoun leaves the prep school out of his discussion, saying all freshmen, direct from high school or not, would be looked at equally.
Calhoun has seen the football benefits of utilizing redshirts, and not just at the hands of his most recent opponents. When he arrived at Wake Forest as an assistant in 2001 under Jim Grobe, the staff made it a goal to redshirt every incoming player for a two-year window.
In 2006, Wake Forest won the ACC and played in the Orange Bowl for the only time in school history.
“The continuum,” Calhoun said. “Anytime you’re able to redshirt players, you can have a continuum program. It makes a massive difference.”
Air Force Times Sept 23, 2013
Welsh: Scarce Resources Must Go To Core Missions
By Jeff Schogol
Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh has a lot to contend with — an aging fleet of aircraft, an uncertain fiscal future and the possibility that the Air Force will be needed for an operation in Syria.
With all the demands on the service, Welsh is concentrating on making sure the Air Force can execute its core missions. In a wide-ranging interview, he talked about what the future holds for the Air Force.
Q. This year Air Combat Command had to go to tiered readiness for the first time in the service’s history. Do you expect this to be the new norm?
A. I hope not. But, until we get the fiscal problem straightened out and we have a predictable top line, we are planning for every possible contingency here. So, hopefully in ’14 we will have, even if we do have a continuing resolution and fall under sequester again, we will have an entire year to spread it across, as opposed to the six months we had[this] year. But, we cannot take any option off the table right now.
Q. When you look at where the service needs to fund its priorities, how do you triage between what the Air Force absolutely needs to do and then what, for lack of a better term, would be called nice-to-haves?
A. We have five core missions [air and space superiority; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; rapid global mobility; global strike; and command and control]. They have not changed since 1947. We will be expected to provide those core missions for the combatant commanders. And, so that is where we will focus. We do them in three domains, we do them in air, space and cyber, and we change the way we do them over time, but those core missions are what we do. And, that is where we will prioritize resources.
Q. We know there are personnel cuts in the ’13 budget and, as sequestration lasts, it is likely there will be more. Do you find yourself in a position where you have to trade personnel for modernization?
A. [In] any business, if you look at changing your top line significantly over time, you are going to have to take a hard look at where you spend money in your infrastructure, whether that is facilities infrastructure or is people as infrastructure. We have four pots of money in the Air Force. We have facilities infrastructure, we have personnel, we have modernization, and we have readiness. Right now, because of the mechanism of sequestration and limits on cutting money from other places, we cannot touch the installations and infrastructure piece yet. We have not been able to touch the personnel piece yet, which is 50 percent of our budget. And, so everything we have taken so far has come out of modernization and readiness. In the future, the math does not work, unless we change that approach. So, we have to get at some of the savings in those other two areas.
Q. The Air Force during the last [base realignment and closure] round had 20 percent excess infrastructure, and that has only gone up as the Air Force has cut back on the number of air frames. Do you foresee the services being able to convince Congress of the need for another BRAC round?
A. The members of the United States Congress are all pretty smart people, and I think what we have to do this year from an Air Force perspective is focus on making sure that we have looked hard at the things they asked us to look at first, which is all of our overseas infrastructure. And, that we have a solid plan for either consolidation, reductions, whatever makes sense. This has been fully coordinated with the combatant commanders and approved through the Department of Defense, and let us get that to the Hill and let them take a look at it and get their comfort level to a point where they know we have taken a serious, due-diligence look at overseas infrastructure.
There is some enduring infrastructure required overseas to provide options to the president. And, so we just need to make that clear... and then we will talk again about doing a BRAC here in the states.
Q. Another issue is the aging fleet of aircraft. I have heard it said that this is the oldest iron the Air Force has ever had in the service’s history. What are the real-world consequences of that?
A. Over time, you either become unaffordable, because maintenance and operations and sustainment costs get so high, or you become not viable against a threat, or you become both. So, we are looking at every platform we have, every one of those five core missions and trying to decide where must we recapitalize versus where can we modernize. You get to a certain point where modernizing an older platform is not much cheaper than recapitalizing to a newer one. And, then there is other technology that you need to recapitalize on like the F-35 that is expensive. It costs a lot of money to maintain your superiority and be able to operate in the most complex air defenses in the next 30 years. And, yet, it is a capability operationally you simply have to have if you are going to be the Air Force for the world’s foremost military power.
And so, our objective is to make sure we paint this picture clearly in the budget discussions. My personal belief is that we need to be sure we do not stop recapitalizing. We have to recapitalize, not just modernize.
Q. You have said it is easier to cut an entire fleet than individual aircraft.
A. I did not say it was easier to do it, I said you only gain major savings if you cut an entire fleet. You can cut aircraft from a fleet, but you save a lot more money if you cut all the infrastructure that supports the fleet.
Q. Were you thinking of any particular fleets?
A. No, that is just as a guiding principle. If you are going to save large chunks of money, you have to at least consider reducing fleets.
Q. When people hear that, I think the first thing that comes to mind is the Air Force is considering phasing out the A-10.
A. Oh, they can pick an airplane. We have lots of fleets. The thing that people need to be considering right now is that $1.3 trillion over 10 years is going to leave a bruise. The impacts are significant, and that is if the numbers do not come down more. So, we have got to be willing to look at big changes. If we do not, we cannot pay the bill.
Q. And, what are some of these big changes?
A. Fleets of airplanes, different ways of organizing, looking at how we do business in our five core mission areas, figuring out whether we recapitalize or modernize. We cannot do both, or we cannot do as much of both as we would like to, so we have to adjust everything we have in the plan right now.
Q. You are working on a plan of what the Air Force is going to look like in 2023. How is that coming?
A. Pretty well. Now, the plan is going, it has multiple branch plans depending on what the actual resources look like once we get to a final decision on what the long-range budgets are going to be for the Department of Defense and then the Air Force’s piece of that. The [quadrennial defense review] will influence that as the department goes through a discussion of where should the priorities lie, and things could be adjusted based on that.
Q. While the Air Force is facing these severe fiscal constraints, there is talk about a possible operation in Syria. You have talked about the impact of sequestration on readiness. Would the Air Force be prepared if called upon to enforce some kind of mission in Syria?
A. There is not a mission that the nation could ask the Air Force that we would not be capable of doing. Over time, and this has nothing to do with Syria by the way, it just has to do with reduced readiness over time, just creates a little higher level of risk. And so, while you can deploy, you can get the mission done, you are introducing an element of risk that does not have to be there to your people and your equipment, because they are not as highly trained as they normally would be.
Q. Getting back to sequestration, what is it going to feel like if it lasts into fiscal ’14 and fiscal ’15, and how are airmen going to feel the effects of it?
A. They are feeling the effects now. There are some who are not as well-trained as they would hope to be right now. There are some who are not as proficient at their primary task as they would like to be. They take great pride in being good at what they do. If you are in a unit that has not been flying or has not been going to training or has not been the normal exercises that you do to stay proficient, and continue to help yourself know that you are the best in the world at your task, then you are a little frustrated by that right now. And, I think for a short period of time you can get through that. If that extends into long periods of time, morale becomes a concern.
Q. When you talk to airmen and they voice their concerns about sequestration, what do they tell you they are most worried about?
A. The big thing I think most airmen that have talked to me are worried about [is] the capability that they believe the Air Force brings to the nation. And, they do not want it to diminish, because they are very proud of it. They work awfully hard to provide global vision, global reach and global power for America, and they do not want the Air Force’s ability to provide that to be diminished in any way, shape or form. I think we are facing a reality where our capacity will have to come down, but nobody wants, while that capacity comes down, for our capability to come down with it. We still want to be really good. I mean, that is who we are, that is kind of how we operate, how we think.
Q. If sequestration lasts, is there any idea how much more of a cut in end strength the Air Force would have to take?
A. No, it is going to depend on how long it lasts, what we have to do to, what trades we end up making, what the Department of Defense decides, the trades it is going to make in terms of capability between the services. There are a lot of factors in that that I just do not know the answers to, yet. Defense News Sept 16, 2013
US Air Force Weighs Scrapping KC-10s, A-10s, F-15Cs, New CSAR Helicopters
By Marcus Weisgerber and Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — Faced with steep budget cuts and the desire to keep existing procurement initiatives on track, the US Air Force is considering scrapping its entire fleet of KC-10 tankers and A-10 attack jets, according to multiple military and defense sources.
Also on the chopping block are F-15C fighter jets and a planned $6.8 billion purchase of new combat search-and-rescue helicopters, these sources say.
While these proposals are far from final, the options show the magnitude of the decisions facing Air Force leadership as the service wrestles with the prospect of cutting billions of dollars in planned spending over the next decade.
“You only gain major savings if you cut an entire fleet,” Gen. Mark Welsh, Air Force chief of staff, told sister publication Air Force Times last week. “You can cut aircraft from a fleet, but you save a lot more money if you cut all the infrastructure that supports the fleet.”
When directly asked about phasing out the A-10 fleet, Welsh declined to comment on specific aircraft.
“We are looking at every platform we have, every one of those five core missions and trying to decide where must we recapitalize versus where can we modernize,” Welsh said.
The Air Force’s 2015 spending plan is due to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) by Sept. 23.
Each US military service is developing two budgets for 2015 — one that includes sequestration spending cuts and another that builds on the Pentagon’s 2014 budget proposal, which is $52 billion above the sequestration cap.
OSD must approve the services’ budget proposals during a series of back-and-forth deliberations in the coming months before a final spending plan is sent to lawmakers in February.
In an emailed statement, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said no decisions have been finalized.
“As the Air Force plans for a future with sequestration, we are looking at all options to accomplish our mission within available resources,” Stefanek said. “At this time, all options being considered are pre-decisional.”
Deep Cuts
The four-month-long Strategic Choices and Management Review — a DoD effort that looked at ways the Pentagon might have to modify its military strategy due to budget cuts — found the Air Force could cut up to five tactical aircraft squadrons, DoD announced in July.
The proposed aircraft cuts, particularly the 340-aircraft A-10 fleet, are sure to face scrutiny in Congress. About half of the A-10 fleet resides in the Air National Guard. An Air Force proposal to cut five A-10 squadrons last year faced stiff opposition in Congress and from state governors.
The Air Force Reserve also operates A-10s, which were heavily used to provide support to ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. A-10s also are based in South Korea.
Sources say the Army is interested in obtaining A-10s should the Air Force decide to retire the twin-engine jets, which have been flying since the 1970s.
The Air Force operates 59 KC-10s, according to a service fact sheet. The tri-jet, which is based on the commercial McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jetliner, is the workhorse of the Air Force aerial refueling fleet.
The tankers — equipped with both boom and hose-and-drogue refueling systems — can refuel Air Force, Navy and international military aircraft on a single sortie.
Also on the table is an unspecified number of cuts to the Boeing F-15C Eagle fleet. The Air Force has about 250 of the fighter jets, which, along with the F-22 Raptor, make up the service’s air-to-air fighter arsenal.
Pentagon leaders for several years have said they would like to get rid of single-mission platforms.
An Air Force plan to cut the A-10 doesn’t come as a surprise, said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group. He said the active service has been trying to kill off the platform for years. But while congressional pressure has saved the planes in the past, budget realities may make cuts realistic for the first time.
“These are strange and dangerous times budgetarily, which means the Air Force might finally get their way,” Aboulafia said. He pointed out that the A-10 is not particularly useful for either counterinsurgency actions or for the so-called pivot to Asia, leaving the platform strategically on the outside looking in.
“If there were any plans to fight a land war, this would not be good news. But everything about the budget implies they have stepped away from land wars,” he said. “It’s a good way for the Air Force to save cash and declare victory in a turf war.”
Conversely, Aboulafia calls the potential KC-10 cuts “a baffler,” citing the relatively young age of the aircraft and its importance for movement across the Pacific. He speculated that including the KC-10 may be the Air Force attempting to drive home the impact of sequestration and budget cuts, as the program still provides a number of jobs that members of Congress would want to protect.
Retiring the F-15C would save maintenance and upgrade costs, Rebecca Grant, president of IRIS Research and a former USAF official, said. The service could then use those funds to speed procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
“It’s a gutsy move assuming a lot of risk, but there’s risk to all these scenarios,” Grant said. “It may be there is less risk retiring the F-15C right now than there is in getting the fleet we need some years down the road.”
Air Force leaders are still locked in a passionate debate over whether to move aircraft and personnel into the Guard and reserve. Advocates for this move say the savings achieved could allow the Air Force to keep aircraft in the inventory.
New Rescue Helos Still in Limbo
While the Air Force sequestration budget proposal cancels the Combat Rescue Helicopter (CRH) program, a separate 2015 budget proposal — the one that builds on the Pentagon’s 2014 budget plan — funds the effort, sources said.
Sikorsky is the only company to publicly announce a bid in the CRH program. A contract award was expected this month, but has been pushed to the first quarter of fiscal 2014, which begins Oct. 1.
If CRH is canceled, the service could coast with its inventory of HH-60 Pave Hawks, perhaps with limited procurement to replace losses. Grant, however, cautions that could be a mistake.
“The Air Force needs [CRH], but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it flip,” Grant said. “We’ve taken risk in the helicopter fleet for close to a decade now, and it’s time to take the risk somewhere else. They need to get that one done.”
While many factors can change over the next five months of budget deliberations, the decision to abandon the service’s one-time No. 2 acquisition program shows the desire of Air Force leaders to protect procurement programs already in production or of higher priority, sources said.
The Air Force brass wants to continue funding Boeing KC-46A refueling tankers, Lockheed Martin F-35 joint strike fighters and development of a new long-range bomber.
Pentagon officials do not want to break the fixed-price tanker contract that requires Boeing to pay for development or production hiccups. The bomber is a key component in the Pentagon’s long-term, Pacific-focused strategy, and the F-35 is the only fifth-generation US combat fighter aircraft in production.
In the end, Congress will have the final say. Lawmakers were less than thrilled with the Air Force’s 2014 budget proposal, reversing several big-ticket items. Air Force News Service Sept. 13, 2013
AFA Air & Space Conference comes to AF.mil
By Airman 1st Class Alexander W. Riedel
FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. (AFNS) -- A new iteration of the Air Force Association’s annual Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition is set to take place Sept. 16-18 at National Harbor, Md.
The conference is designed to bring together Air Force leaders, defense industry experts, academia and specialists from around the world to discuss the issues and challenges facing the Unites States and the aerospace community today.
The Defense Media Activity and www.af.mil will bring coverage of the conference’s most important events right to your computer screen, by live-streaming events on the Air Force Events page and the Pentagon Channel, as well as through news, print and photos of the days' events.
Select conference presentations are to be streamed live, to include Acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning’s Monday delivery of the Air Force’s "State of the Force" address, followed Sept. 17 by Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh III, who will give an update on the Air Force's direction today and in the future. Finally, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Cody will speak on critical issues from the perspective of the enlisted force Sept. 18.
The tentative dates and times for all live events and speakers are (Editor’s note: No video will be available until the scheduled event times):
Sept. 16 10:35 a.m. - Acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning delivers the "State of the Air Force" address 1:55 p.m. - Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger, the commander, Air Force Materiel Command, gives her view on “Sustaining the Force”
Sept. 17 11 a.m. - Gen. William L. Shelton, the commander, Air Force Space Command, speaks on “Integrating Air, Space and Cyberspace capabilities” 1:15 p.m. - Gen. Mark Welsh III, the chief of staff of the Air Force, provides the “Air Force Update” 3:25 p.m. - Panel discussion with the Honorable James Roche, the Honorable Michael Wynne and the Honorable Whitten Peters: “Managing an Air Force” 4:20 p.m - Gen. Mike Hostage, the commander Air Combat Command, speaks on “Combat Air Force in the 2020s”
Sept. 18 9 a.m. - Keynote speech by Admiral James Winnefield, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 10:55 a.m. - Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force James Cody provides the “Enlisted Perspective” 14:25 p.m. - Gen. Herbert Carlisle speaks on “Viewing the Asia Pacific Rebalance through the lens of the Pacific Air Forces”
Official Air Force participation at the conference has been approved, according to an AFA press release, and all military members on active duty and Defense Department civilian personnel are invited to attend the conference free of charge. Additionally, the exhibit hall is free and open to the public with valid registration. Air Force Times Sep. 13, 2013
AF publishes list of sex assault convictions
A newly published Air Force document includes all sexual assault convictions from 2010 through August of this year. It marks the first time the service has attempted to release such a list as it faces criticism for its handling of sex assault cases.
The service had a 57 percent conviction rate in fiscal 2012, according to the 62-page list, which is posted on the Air Force Judge Advocate General website under a link called “sexual assault information.” Each conviction includes the name and rank of the airman, the base where the offense occurred, the trial results and the sentence.
The report doesn’t list airmen who were acquitted of sexual assault at court-martial. It does not state whether a sentence was reduced by a commander through clemency or appeal. The Air Force has said there have been five such cases in the last five years.
The list also doesn’t include airmen whose cases were handled administratively, meaning the airman did not go to court-martial.
“The appropriate disposition of sexual assault allegations and investigations may not always include referral to trial by court-martial,” according to the document.
All the service branches have come under fire for their handling of sex assault cases. Several high-profile cases have rocked the military, including the dozens of investigations of military training instructors at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland and the overturning of a sex assault conviction by an Air Force commander in February. A Defense Department report also showed a sharp rise in the number of service members who said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact.
In the aftermath, lawmakers have called for changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Some have demanded the military remove the chain of command entirely from the decision- making process in sex assault cases. Others have supported less drastic changes, including stripping commanders of the authority to overturn jury verdicts in major criminal cases.
Meanwhile, the services have ramped up sexual assault prevention and response efforts. In January, the Air Force launched a special victims counsel program, which provides attorneys to victims of sex crimes. The Air Force also has an ongoing prevention and response campaign that includes a blog, live web chats with leaders and videos featuring sex assault survivor stories.
The service branches have also made efforts to provide greater transparency within the military criminal justice system.
In July, the Navy released the results of each court-martial and special court-martial from January to June — 135 in all. Although it included all crimes, the Navy said it was an effort to curb sexual assault, and the service plans to publish the information regularly.
“This department is committed to using all available resources to prevent this crime, aggressively investigate allegations and prosecute as appropriate,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a statement announcing the changes. “We will not hide from this challenge — we will be active, open and transparent.” Christian Science Monitor Sept. 15, 2013
Cyber Security: The New Arms Race For A New Front Line
The Pentagon – and a growing cyber industrial complex – gears up for the new front line: cyberspace. Cyber defense is necessary. But it could cost us.
By Anna Mulrine
Wall Township, N.J.--In the eastern New Jersey suburbs, a train carrying radiological material is barreling toward a small town, and it is up to Pentagon cyber-operators to derail it. The town is the kind of idyllic whistle-stop hamlet where residents socialize at a cafe with complimentary Wi-Fi while surfing FaceSpace, a social networking site.
But danger lurks all around. Terrorists are using the open Wi-Fi connection to hack into the laptop of a patron who works at the hospital down the street. They plan to find the hospital codes stored in his computer to access the mayor's medical records, in which they will change the dosage of a prescription the mayor refills regularly in an effort to poison him.
They have other nefarious future schemes, too: They will cut the power grid with a nasty cybervirus and destroy the local water supply by engineering a program to make it appear as though the reservoir is polluted. When employees dump chemicals into the water to fix the problem, they will inadvertently be doing just what the terrorists want: contaminating the water supply.
This model town – CyberCity – is one of the US military's premier cyberwar simulators. Situated in a surprisingly unassuming suburban enclave, it is built with hobby shop-supplied model trains, miniature cellphone towers, and streetlights – all attached to a miniature power grid.
CyberCity is just a small town compressed onto an 8-by-10-foot plywood table. But its intricate electronic detail highlights the Pentagon's growing effort to expand its offensive cyberwarfare skills in a bid to bolster the nation's cybersecurity, through increasingly sophisticated and aggressive forays that have the potential to revolutionize the way America's military fights wars.
While the military has long fought on land, sea, and air, the emerging cyber-realm is forcing top defense officials to navigate the far less tangible – ever more murky – battlefield of computer attacks.
CyberCity offers some insight into one of the attack scenarios that senior military officials fear most: Bad guys plotting to take down the US power grid or financial networks.
Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta characterized this sort of strike as a "cyber Pearl Harbor," a doomsday sobriquet that has quickly become part of the cyber lexicon. And Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has picked up the banner, warning that a cybersiege could "paralyze an electric grid, a banking system, knock out computers on ships or weapons systems – and you never fire a shot."
So the Pentagon is rapidly ramping up to expand its cyberwarfare capacity, bidding to be the go- to authority for the nation's cyberdefense. Cyber-operations is one of its few areas that will see a considerable budget increase – from $3.9 billion this year to $4.7 billion in 2014. And its cadre of cyberwarriors manning computers will expand fivefold over the next two years.
A cyber-industrial complex blooms
Yet with this explosion in US military cyber-operations – and with the corresponding boom in the number of defense contractors to support cyber-activity – comes concern that a rapidly expanding "cyber-industrial complex" could jeopardize the openness and democratic ideals of the Internet.
It's a threat that seems more pressing in light of National Security Agency surveillance exposed by former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden. The operations of the NSA, a US military organization, indicate that some officials want nothing more "than to identify anyone who connects to the Internet – to get rid of anonymity – so that we can always know who says what to whom," argues Jerry Brito, an attorney and senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
"Sure, that would probably make our networks very secure," Mr. Brito adds. "But that's also called a police state."
To bolster their case, analysts point to recent revelations that the NSA is secretly paying US companies hundreds of millions of dollars a year for clandestine access to their communications networks.
"It turns surveillance into a revenue stream," Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The Washington Post. "And that's not the way it's supposed to work."
While the NSA surveillance is ostensibly to detect foreign agents who might harm the United States in a terrorist plot, there is growing concern that the Pentagon may be laying the groundwork for expanded data collection from US companies under the guise of protecting them from cyberattacks, too.
At a conference in August on the security of the electric grid, for example, former NSA Director Michael Hayden lamented that the Internet "wasn't built to be protected ... and that remains in the architecture in today's World Wide Web, and that's why we're in the position we're in."
Mr. Hayden then issued a warning to private companies at risk for hacks and data theft, which some analysts interpreted as a veiled threat: "So those of you in private industry, I guess the point I really want to make to you is the next sound you hear will not be pounding hoofs as the federal cavalry comes over the nearest ridgeline to your cyber-rescue. You're responsible for your safety."
Some companies have taken up the challenge and turned it into a lucrative – legally fraught – venture, hiring hackers to probe private networks, then sell the vulnerabilities back to corporate customers.
The well-regarded Mandiant Corporation – which uncovered a series of cyberattacks on US networks by a branch of China's People's Liberation Army – was hired by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal when they were hacked. And Mandiant's professional hackers consult with a number of Fortune 500 companies at a reported rate of $450 an hour.
Other companies are taking matters into their own hands, raising questions about the legality of private firms striking back against cyberattackers.
Former FBI cyber lawyer Steven Chabinsky argued at a recent cyber symposium that a company attacked should be able to counterattack in order to retrieve data: "It is universally accepted that in the physical world, you have the right to protect your property without first going to law enforcement."
This gets messy, of course, and may argue for a more clear role for the US military. Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma noted during a recent congressional hearing that financial firms have spent millions of dollars responding to cyberattacks and "can't be expected to fend off attacks from a foreign government."
Indeed, responded Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the US Cyber Command: "I think this gets to the heart of 'how do we defend the country, and when does the Defense Department step in to defend the country?' "
At the same time, there is reason to question an expanded military role in domestic cybersecurity, says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "These are secret US military agencies that have a tendency to expand their scope of activities," Mr. Aftergood adds, "but never to retreat."
There is a concern, however, among some companies about being compelled to share data with the government – coupled with a less altruistic disinclination to let it be known when they have been hacked, since it might jeopardize customer confidence.
As a result, there is a push in some corners for establishing cybersecurity-insurance programs to mitigate the cost of fortifying networks in the event of a breach, as well as proposals to establish legislation that treats various sorts of companies and incursions differently.
"If you're an auto parts manufacturer and your data is stolen, that's sort of like if your home got burgled – it's up to you whether you want to tell your friends or not," says Brito. "But if you're a company and you are breached in a way that might put your customers' data at risk, then you should be required to tell someone."
Pentagon stakes out turf
In the meantime, the US military is for•ging ahead with its own cyberdefense plans. While the Posse Comitatus Act largely bars the US military from getting involved in law enforcement endeavors, a new Department of Defense publication argues that the Pentagon can provide "law enforcement actions that are performed primarily for a military purpose, even when incidentally assisting civil authorities," notes Aftergood.
That includes cyberattacks, under the category of "complex catastrophe" – a "new addition to the DOD lexicon" introduced in the DOD report, he adds. "There is some turf-marking that seems to be going on on the part of the Pentagon."
It's a lexicon that has been embraced, too, by defense contractors eyeing the end of the war in Afghanistan and vying for their next business opportunity. Half of Booz Allen's $5.8 billion annual revenue comes from US military and intelligence agency contracts. Former NSA Director Mike McConnell now heads the company's "rapidly expanding" cyber division (earning $2.3 million a year to do so) and has likened cyberattacks to weapons of mass destruction. His division has a $5.6 billion, five-year intelligence analysis contract to protect networks in the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.
Some analysts worry that the big money involved could encourage fearmongering.
"If you're in the business of selling safeguards against cyberthreats, as many large firms are, you have an incentive to hype the threat," Aftergood says. "I don't want to be overly cynical about this and say that just because there is financial incentive, the threat is bogus, but it is a challenge to sort through the various claims and chart a way forward."
Industry specialists point out, however, that the business is lucrative because the cost of cybertheft is high and growing. A recent report by the Ponemon Institute, an independent security policy research group, surveyed 56 multinational companies and found the average annual cybertheft losses were $8.9 million per company, up from $8.4 million in 2011. Companies in the study reported a total of 102 successful attacks per week. (By way of comparison, there are more than 15,000 DOD computers in 100 countries, which are probed "thousands of times a day," according to a top Pentagon official who briefed reporters in February. "And we have not always been successful in stopping intrusions.")
Against this backdrop, plans leaked earlier this year that the US military is quickly working to increase the size of its cyber forces in its premier computer defense arm, US Cyber Command, from 900 to 4,900 during the next two years.
One-third of these will be designated "national mission forces," with special training in protecting critical infrastructure like power plants at national "cyber ranges" where they can practice and hone their skills. The group is slated to be ready to be up and working by the end of the month.
One-third more will be "cyber-protection forces" to defend the Pentagon's networks, and the final third are designated "combat mission forces" responsible for counterattacks and other offensive operations by September 2015.
The unprecedented growth in these forces is "also a recognition that the problem has become so great that they need to act quickly," says Alan Paller, founder of the SANS Institute, a private firm that is one of the premier training organizations for the US Air Force. "And it's a recognition that in this arena, the skills are the weapon."
Fine lines between offense and defense
CyberCity, one of a number of Air Force cybertraining ranges, grew out of a request from senior defense officials who wanted to hone the offensive cyberskills of US troops.
"They came to us and said, 'We need you to figure out some way to teach cyberwarriors that cyberattacks have a kinetic effect – that they make stuff move, blow up – and that people can get killed," says Ed Skoudis, founder of Counter Hack, the company that designed CyberCity, and a trainer at the SANS Institute.
US military officials asked that the city include a reservoir, as well as a lighted landing strip.
Mr. Skoudis estimates CyberCity missions break down equally into defensive and offensive training.
To illustrate the effect of cyberattack skills, for example, Skoudis has installed a miniature Nerf rocket launcher on the outskirts of CyberCity. When the US military begins to use the cyber- range regularly later this year, the mission for trainees will be to reverse-engineer the controls to the rocket launcher to make sure it fires away from the hospital rather than – as terrorists would have it – toward innocent patients.
"If you can hack a computer and use it to launch a Nerf rocket launcher, you have some interesting skills, no?" Skoudis says. "The skills that we're building can be used for offense or defense."
Cyberwarriors of the future, he points out, will often need to make use of offensive skills to defend US interests – a branch of cyber that the US military has only more recently begun to discuss, and even then in highly general terms, in the hope that mention of it might serve as some deterrent to would-be attackers.
"All the offensive stuff we describe is to take control of things to keep bad things from happening," Skoudis notes. "Of course, you can always use those skills to make bad things happen."
These are complex talents, and the plan to expand the cyber cadre has quickly raised concerns about how the services will find enough cyberwarriors to do the job – and keep them from decamping for the high-paying private sector firms eager to recruit well-trained specialists with top-secret security clearances.
Maj. Gen. Suzanne "Zan" Vautrinot, commander of Air Forces Cyber and of Air Force Network Operations at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, offers a glimpse of the wide scope of Pentagon designs for cybersecurity. She cites congressional figures that indicate the military has 1,000 cyberwarriors who can operate at the highest level. But, she adds, "what we need is on the order of 20,000 or 30,000.... Cyber is foundational to everything we do, because everything you do in your mission is dependent on it."
For this reason, the US military's cyber effort is heavily reliant on civilian contractors like Mr. Snowden, along with the National Guard.
"There is a talent search within the existing military forces," says Mr. Paller. This involves reaching out to increasingly young prospective cyber prodigies, including high school students, and giving them secret security clearances in order to test the extent of their skills.
At the military's largest cyberwarfare school, the Air Force's 39th Information Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla., students conduct real-time operations against cyberattacks on simulators like CyberCity.
The training is increasingly sophisticated, notes Col. John "Kiley" Weigle, commander of the squadron, who adds that he would like to see the number of trainers grow: "I could easily see this all doubling, given the correct instructors, to be much more close to what the nation needs."
Phishing for generals
As the US military's top flag officers sit down at their office computers each morning to sift through e-mail, their in-boxes routinely hold lures from hackers across the globe in search of an easy mark.
If these would-be infiltrators succeed in getting a general to click on a link embedded in an otherwise innocuous-looking e-mail, it may offer them entry to the DOD's top-secret networks and allow them to troll undetected, potentially exporting valuable data about US defense systems.
One of the more popular – and successful – recent phishing expeditions was an attachment labeled "I love you."
"It's the biggest threat right now that the Air Force and others are seeing," says Col. David Gibson, head of the computer science department at the Air Force Academy. "It's 'whale- phishing' – targeting a specific bigwig. In the Air Force, all of the general officers are constantly getting these," Gibson says.
Instead of simply remaining on the defense, the Air Force Academy is now teaching its young cadets how to wage offensive cyberwarfare by showing them how to harness some of the most insidious cybertactics used against the military. This starts with learning how to target high- profile people.
"This is a great tool to get to know the leadership in an adversary's country – where are they going to be at a certain time, trying to influence adversarial leadership. There's absolutely a lot of fruit in that sort of endeavor," Gibson says.
The incoming cadets get advanced instruction in "social engineering," which involves, among other things, "learning how to build e-mails to try to fool the recipient into doing something, like clicking on a link." Such e-mails are "incredibly sophisticated," because of the variety of information now available on social networking sites.
During their social engineering lessons, cadets draw on Facebook, newspapers, and other open sources of information to try to create an e-mail that might convince their targets to open an attachment or link that they shouldn't.
"It's 'how do I trick my classmates, and make this look as legitimate as possible?' " Gibson says.
Increasingly offensive in nature, this curriculum has sparked concern among some faculty about teaching such skills to cadets.
"I still have some in my department who are really nervous about teaching teenagers that there are tools freely available out there that you can download easily and use to break into other people's computers," Gibson acknowledges. "And they're right to be concerned about this. But I and most of my faculty have become convinced that this is the world we live in: that to be a good defender – which is what we need – you have to know what's coming at you and how."
To this end, the first classified data that young cadets at the Air Force Academy receive is a briefing about the cyberthreat.
Recruiting hackers from middle school
The military is also reaching out to even younger students through high school talent searches in the form of cybergames like CyberPatriot, a hacking tournament pitting young high school students against industry mentors who play the aggressors in a contest to see who can destroy the other's network first.
"If you compete well," Vautrinot says, "that highlights to the industry, 'Hey, this guy's got game.'"
Students who have caught the eye of commanders are recruited into an internship program to do temporary stints with the military.
"We gave them clearances and they are actually doing forensics on intrusions into our network," says Vautrinot, who likens the process to a coach replaying a game tape for a team after the big game. Sometimes they go on "hunt missions" looking for enemy hackers lurking in the systems.
"They can learn, 'How did that work, so I can thwart it the next time?' " Vautrinot says, extending the sports analogy. "What does it look like when they move back their arm to throw? So that even before the play sets up, it can be identified and automatically responded to on the network."
The Air Force is now even reaching down into middle schools to identify prodigies.
Even in such a prioritized field in the US military, however, there are limitations, Weigle says. "It all costs money, and my needs smack into the fiscal reality. I can sit here as the training commander and say, 'Yes, I need my staff to double.' But at what expense, right? I do have to weigh that."
Cybertraining will be a "cradle to grave" endeavor for the military for the foreseeable future, Vautrinot says.
That said, the vast resources being poured into cyber have some questioning whether it is the best use of increasingly scarce defense dollars.
Senior military officials insist that the cost of cyberattacks to the nation is great. "We've seen the attacks on Wall Street over the last six months grow significantly – over 140...," Alexander told the Senate Armed Services Committee last March.
"You don't see a person on the street walking around without a cellphone or a device. It's become part of our American way of life. And it's also incorporated into our weapons systems to make them more accurate," says Col. Jodine Tooke, chief of the Air Force's Cyberspace Force Development Division.
These realms alone "certainly bear protection from a military perspective," she argues. "There may be industry trying to take advantage of our uncertainty about how best to protect networks, but that's why we're building astute people in the force."
Yet Alexander acknowledges, too, that the attacks hitting Wall Street, for example, are mainly "distributed denial-of-service attacks," which tend to be "at the nuisance level."
The vast majority of cyberthreats to US networks today are intellectual property theft and other forms of corporate espionage, rather than the dire sorts of attacks decried by top US officials.
"Any teenager can do a distributed denial-of-service attack. It's finite; when it's done, there's no permanent damage," says George Mason University's Brito. In other words, "it's very easy, and not very harmful."
On the other hand, a "kinetic" attack, in which a hacker is able to, say, open a dam and flood a community, "is incredibly difficult – we've never seen it happen."
Such an attack would be "incredibly harmful, but if you look at the realm of possibility, really unlikely," Brito adds.
"When you hear all the rhetoric from politicians and defense contractors, it's a cyber Pearl Harbor where planes fall out of the sky, trains derail, and thousands are killed – but they provide no evidence to back up serious threats, and a lot of it is easily debunked.
"The lesson," he argues, "is to be more critical."
A whiff of August 1945
It is, of course, the US military's job to plan for unlikely but highly catastrophic attacks.
That said, even top defense officials acknowledge that a cyber Pearl Harbor is unlikely, and would portend more problems for America than simply cybersecurity.
China is "without question ... the country that's out there stealing our stuff," says retired NSA Director Hayden.
But, he says, "I find it hard to imagine circumstances where China would do something incredibly destructive to any American network – the grid – absent a far more problematic international environment in which the cyberattack is itself part of a larger package of really, really bad things."
Still, the US military continues to refine and deploy its own increasingly sophisticated cyberweaponry – including Stuxnet, a cybervirus created to damage Iran's nuclear reactors, a fact that gives some top US officials pause.
Without commenting on the origin of Stuxnet, Hayden says that "blowing a thousand centrifuges in Natanz [in Iran], I think, is absolutely, unalloyed good," the use of cyberweaponry should not be taken lightly.
"Someone, almost certainly a nation-state – during a time of peace – just used a cyberweapon to destroy another nation's critical infrastructure," Hayden said. "That's a big deal."
"This has the whiff of August 1945. Somebody just used a new weapon," he adds. "And this weapon will not be put back into the box."
Army Times Sept. 23, 2013
DoD Will 'Aggressively' Target Compensation
By Andrew Tilghman
As the Defense Department maps out plans to absorb long-term budget cuts, military compensation and troop levels are among the primary targets, the Pentagon’s top financial officer said.
“I think we will go after military compensation aggressively,” DoD Comptroller Robert Hale said during public remarks at a recent meeting of the Reserve Forces Policy Board.
Hale said annual military pay raises likely will fall below the rise in inflation next year, and that may be the first of many similar reductions.
Congress is battling over whether to give troops a raise to match the official Employment Cost Index — a measure of private-sector wage growth — of 1.8 percent, or to limit the pay bump to 1 percent. Hale and other top DoD officials are advocating for the lower raise as a way to slow the long-term growth of personnel costs.
“I think we will prevail in that,” Hale said.
That would be the first time military pay would fall below the ECI since 1998. For much of the 2000s, Congress approved hefty raises above the ECI in an effort to close a purported “gap” between military and private-sector pay that peaked at about 13.5 percent in the 1990s. But those days are over. DoD argues that any pay gap has disappeared when the total military compensation package — including tax-free housing and food allowances — is considered.
“I would not be surprised to see us propose continued limits on military pay raises,” Hale said, adding that officials do not believe limiting the growth of military pay will significantly affect recruiting and retention.
“As we look out right now — even in a period when unemployment improves — it appears to us that our compensation package is sufficient to let us do that and we could slow the growth ... not cut pay, but slow the growth.”
Hale is central to the Pentagon’s internal discussions on how to absorb the sweeping budget cuts known as sequestration that began in March. Current federal law requires the Defense Department to crop about 10 percent from 2012 spending levels and face similar spending caps for the next 10 years.
Reducing troop levels will be another way to meet those budget targets, Hale said.
“We just need to push for force structure cuts and some slowing of compensation,” Hale said. “The United States military has got to get smaller.”
The current national security strategy calls for a “rebalance” in the Asia-Pacific region and avoiding costly boots-on-the-ground stability operations. That will tend to hit the Army and Marine Corps most directly, but all four services likely will face troop cuts, he said.
“That strategy will tend to lead to disproportionate cuts to the ground forces but the Navy and the Air Force are going to have to get smaller too,” Hale said.
Reducing force levels likely will begin next year and continue steadily for the next several years, Hale said.
“It is very difficult for us to quickly cut our own forces because we would prefer not to go to involuntary separations where we can avoid them,” he said. “So it just takes time to get the units out... not to mention all the political problems.”
Initially, the strategy likely will require deep reductions in modernization programs, which are easier to cut on short notice. But over time, personnel cuts will account for more savings.
“We need to make cuts in [fiscal 2014] in military personnel aimed at helping in [2015] or we will be in exactly the same situation,” Hale said.
DoD needs to cut force size to avoid a so-called hollow force, he said. “We could have a force that is too large, that is neither ready nor perhaps properly equipped. We need to try to avoid that.”
Hale did not cite specific targets for troop cuts. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in July said today’s Army of about 535,000 could fall to 420,000 or even 380,000 and the Marine Corps may drop from today’s 194,000 to 150,000. Hagel did not suggest that the Navy and Air Force would also face cuts.
For many months, Pentagon officials refused to plan for sequestration cuts, hoping that Congress would reach a broad budget agreement that would allow defense spending to rise by raising taxes and cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
But Hale said he sees no deal on the horizon. “Everyone agrees that it is highly desirable. It’s also highly unlikely. I’d say it requires a political miracle. In fact, at this point, I’d say it probably requires consecutive political miracles,” Hale said.
“Perhaps a bit more likely is a mini-budget deal,” Hale said, describing a hypothetical agreement that would lift some, but not all, of the defense spending caps.
“How likely is a mini deal?” Hale asked rhetorically. “I would say we’re still talking a political miracle.” Stars and Stripes Sept. 15, 2013
Obama, GOP in showdown over government shutdown
By J. Taylor Rushing
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Sunday vowed anew to reject any fiscal negotiations with congressional Republicans that include the federal debt ceiling, setting up a showdown over the debt limit that the U.S. government is expected to reach in a month.
In a 30-minute interview with ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, Obama outlined several topics he said he would discuss with Republicans, including the federal budget, the forced budget cuts known as sequestration, tax initiatives, entitlements and even modifications to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called “Obamacare.”
“What I haven’t been willing to negotiate on, and what I will not negotiate on, is the debt ceiling,” Obama said.
Pressed on whether he is reversing himself after negotiating on the issue in the past, Obama said he has never done so.
“What’s never happened in the past is the notion that in exchange for fulfilling the full faith and credit of the United States, we are wiping away major legislation like the health care bill. We’ve never had a situation in which a party said, ‘Unless we get our way 100 percent, then we’re going to let the United States default,’ ” Obama said.
“The problem we have is a faction of the Republican Party, particularly in the House of Representatives, views ‘compromise’ as a dirty word, and anything that is even remotely associated with me, they’re going to oppose. My argument to them is real simple: ‘That’s not why the people sent you here.’ ”
Call it the shutdown showdown. When the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, so too does funding for federal government programs and services. Roughly two weeks later, the federal government will once again bump up against its debt ceiling, forcing Congress into a vote to raise it. However, a small but determined group of Republicans in the House and Senate are threatening to withhold funding for the government — or deny a debt ceiling increase — unless the health care law is defunded or somehow dismantled.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed Congress in late 2009 without a single Republican vote — and has been a favorite target of the GOP ever since. The House has held some 40 different votes to repeal it, and in the Senate similar efforts have reached into the dozens. The top Republican on the Senate Health Committee, Lamar Alexander, issued a statement last week that proudly noted he has voted to oppose or repeal the law more than 90 times.
For his part, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, issued his own vow last week affirming that House Republicans will tie the October debt ceiling vote to the dismantling of the health care law. Boehner said he has delivered that message personally to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“You can’t talk about increasing the debt limit unless you’re willing to make changes and reforms that begin to solve the spending problem that Washington has,” Boehner said.
Another deadline is also looming — on Jan. 1, the law’s so-called “individual mandate” takes effect, which requires Americans to obtain health insurance if they don’t have it already. Citing that requirement, Republicans in both the House and Senate are pushing legislation to at least delay the law for another year.
Democrats are incensed at the continuing Republican efforts to repeal the law.
“There was a poll taken in November 2012. The president of the United States won that poll, but your myopic focus on this one issue threatens to shut down the government and risk the credit worthiness of the United States of America,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said last week in a heated floor speech directed at Republicans.
In the Senate, Democratic leaders blamed the influence of the Tea Party on Republicans in both chambers.
“This is an extreme, hard-right group, and they’ve picked this moment. They’re very blunt about it,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “They’re telling cancer patients, highway construction workers and middle-class families wanting to buy a home that they’re not going to get any help. Many people are against Obamacare, but only a very few say that everything else should be brought to a halt.”
Not all Republicans agree with the strategy of tying government funding or the debt ceiling to Obamacare. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, for one has introduced a measure to prevent a government shutdown by continuing current funding levels for the government until December 15. Rogers said the idea is to buy time for negotiations, calling it “a temporary measure to keep the lights on in government until this Congress can fulfill its duty.”
Like many, Rogers said such a stopgap measure “is not the preferred way of doing the nation’s financial work.
“However, given the late date, a continuing resolution is necessary to stop a governmentwide shutdown that would halt critical government programs and services, destabilize our economy, and put the safety and well-being of our citizens at risk,” he said in a statement.
Speaking on “FOX News Sunday,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said delaying the law is effectively denying the law’s benefits to millions of Americans.
“We’re willing to work out the kinks, but the Republicans just want to wipe out everything about the law,” Van Hollen said. “They’re not afraid it’s going to fail. They’re afraid it’s going to work.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said the current situation is shaping up much like the government shutdown in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president. Gingrich was presiding over the GOP-controlled House at the time. “Clearly, President Obama is going to go to the mat for Obamacare,” Gingrich said. “We are drifting toward a very fundamental fight. It’s unavoidable.”
Colorado Springs Gazette Sept. 15, 2013
A first for academy graduate
Hall started season on active NFL roster
By John Van Winkle
An Air Force Academy graduate and Air Force reservist marked another first in his pro football career this month when he started the season on an NFL roster.
Chad Hall is a wide receiver for the Kansas City Chiefs. This is Hall’s fourth season with the NFL and the first time he was on a team’s active roster for a season opener.
The 2008 academy grad is an Air Force Reserve captain.
Hall started 2013 on the San Francisco 49ers’ practice squad. The team moved him to the active roster Jan. 19. He earned an NFC championship ring and dressed out for the Super Bowl.
He started this season in training camp with the 49ers but was cut in late August when all teams had to reduce their rosters to 53 players.
Even after being given his walking papers from the team that got him to a Super Bowl, Hall was gracious.
“Just wanted to thank those at the 49ers for the opportunity,” Hall tweeted. “Y’all know me, I will be out working everybody until my next opportunity. Can’t wait!”
He didn’t have to wait long before his former head coach Andy Reid came calling.
Hall’s pro career started in 2010 when the Philadelphia Eagles, under then-head coach Reid, signed Hall after he finished his active-duty commitment and transferred to the Air Force Reserve.
Reid is now head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. Owning the top position for waiver claims due to the Chiefs’ 2012 season record, Reid scoured the waiver wire and secured Hall’s services before another team could lay claim to the 5-foot, 8-inch wide receiverreturner.
Hall played for Reid during the 2010 and 2011 seasons, starting each season on the practice squad and being signed to the active roster later both times.
In 2012, when offered a practice squad spot again, Hall declined the Eagles offer. He sought his NFL opportunities elsewhere and was signed to the 49ers practice squad.
Hall’s long road through the NFL landed him an active roster spot for the start of the season, and took him to Jacksonville for last week’s 28-2 Kansas City victory over the Jaguars in the season opener. Hall is one of three academy graduates playing pro football.
Ben Garland is on the Denver Broncos practice squad and plays defensive line after a stint in training camp at offensive guard. Switching to his military uniform, this 2010 Air Force Academy graduate is a captain with the Colorado Air National Guard’s 140th Wing at Buckley Air Force Base.
In the Canadian Football League, the Academy’s Class of 2009 is represented by Spencer Armstrong, who was signed Aug. 5 by the Calgary Stampeders after completing his active-duty obligations. Armstrong, born in Halifax, counts as a non-import player per CFL rules. He was drafted by Calgary in the fourth round of the 2009 CFL draft and is now a wide receiver on the Stampeders’ practice squad. Colorado Springs Gazette Sept. 16, 2013
Council: Support City for Champions proposal
By Trevor Dierdorff
An open letter to City Council members Joel Miller, Keith King, Andy Pico, Don Knight and Helen Collins:
Last Thursday, at the risk of missing kickoff for the Broncos’ season opener, over 100 people gathered in the tight space of the Colorado Springs Conservatory to hear about the City for Champions proposal. As they ran out of seats, people lined the walls and crowded in the stairwell.
I was admittedly skeptical but willing to hear about yet another plan for Colorado Springs. The vision was unveiled along with the admission that they didn’t yet have all of the answers but that they were at a point that they needed help and support from the community to discover those answers should we be awarded funds from the Regional Tourism Act. The artist renderings of what could be in our city alone were exciting. But as the presentation went on, a vision and identity for our presently apathetic and fractured community was becoming clear.
I left excited that finally someone found a way to do something visionary and impactful in our stagnated city. They may even have found over a third of the money already! An Olympic City, with two great universities in UCCS and the Air Force Academy worthy of visiting. Who could possibly oppose this?
It was with surprise and dismay that I read about the City Council’s “no comment” response to the City for Champions in the Sept. 9 Gazette. Although it has garnered the support of Jill Gaebler, Jan Martin, Merv Bennett and Val Snider, it appears that some of our council members are feeling slighted that they weren’t included in this process. I wasn’t, either; get over it.
I’m glad that some folks took the initiative and developed a great vision for our city that will set us apart and boost tourism to Colorado Springs. These are citizens getting done what no city council in my 20 years of living in Colorado Springs has ever done.
El Paso County, Manitou Springs and Monument have endorsed this. How do you think your “no comment” looks to those who are going to decide on these allocations of funds? I’m not sure I’d give us the money if the City Council won’t back it. Shame on you!
You’ve expressed concerns about funding projects like stormwater. I get that; stormwater still needs to be addressed. But this is a tourism grant. In fact, it could provide some of the necessary tax revenue to help fund a stormwater project. If the state was offering a stormwater grant, then I hope that our city would be all over it. This has nothing to do with our stormwater issue.
There is also concern over who may benefit from this opportunity like those who own property at or near the proposed sites. So what!? Have the vision to see that the real benefactors you should be concerned with are the citizens. How about the job creation associated not only at these facilities but also people who work nearby? Councilman Miller, these “developers and land owners” that you vilify are also something very important to our city. They are employers creating jobs. Have you ever created a job? While I absolutely appreciate your service to our country, you’ve spent most of your career on the taxpayers’ dime.
Finally, the issue about moving the Sky Sox: This vision is about much more than that. Security Service Field sits dark most of 300 days per year. The new downtown venue would be designed to host not only baseball but concerts, festivals and other sporting events. Aside from that, the Sky Sox are listed among the numerous organizations supporting this: www.cityforchampions.com/supporters .
Quit pouting that this wasn’t your idea and get behind something that will truly be impactful on our city and our region. If you can’t put together a better vision for our city and how to get $82M to fund it, then you should support the City for Champions. Otherwise, this council will have the same impotent legacy as your predecessors.
Dierdorff is president/CEO of Amnet in Colorado Springs.
Colorado Springs Gazette Sept. 16, 2013
Local hero recalls month as a POW
Goodman’s plane fell over Syria in 1983
By Tom Roeder
Bobby Goodman has no opinion of U.S. military involvement in Syria.
He thinks America should proceed with caution, but he says after that, it’s up to others to decide.
The strange part is that, in a world with thousands of voices on the airwaves and Internet discussing Syria, Goodman, a retired Navy commander and Colorado Springs small-business owner, is the only American who has been to war there and held prisoner.
“Somewhere along the way, I said ‘God bless America,” he remembered of his kaleidoscopic homecoming.
It was 30 years ago.
On the front line
“You can see the strings back to that time period,” Goodman said when thinking of America’s threatened strike on Syria over chemical weapons use.
In 1983, America joined an international coalition to impose a cease-fire in the eight-year-old civil war in Lebanon.
The Lebanese fighting is similar to battles in the region today, but was enmeshed with Cold War nuclear tension, the Palestinian crisis in Israel that followed a string of brushfire wars and Iranian Islamic revolution fervor.
Goodman, a 1978 graduate of the Naval Academy, was on the front line as the navigator and weapons officer for an A-6E Intruder bomber aboard the carrier USS Kennedy.
“It was unclear who the enemy was and what actions might be appropriate,” Goodman said of the Lebanon situation.
A string of events later landed him in Syrian custody.
Months before Goodman arrived off the Lebanese coast, a suicide bomber struck the American embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people.
In October 1983, a suicide truck bomber blasted a barracks full of American Marines in Beirut, killing 241. Those, events, sadly familiar to Americans now, were a shocking introduction to Middle Eastern terrorism for the country — a deadly follow-up to a decade of escalating tensions in the Middle East that included the Iran hostage crisis and the Arab oil embargo.
Goodman was focused on his job rather than world affairs.
“I was a lieutenant on a carrier, in a squadron and didn’t know any of that at the time,” Goodman said.
After the October barracks bombing, American forces stepped up operations over Lebanon, flying regular reconnaissance missions.
But there was no impetus for an air strike until the Syrians, who had intervened in Lebanon, started shooting at American planes.
Goodman was awakened at 4:30 a.m. and told to prepare for a mission.
Helming the Iron Tadpole
The son of an Air Force pilot, Goodman applied as a teenager to the nation’s three major service academies.
He made it through Annapolis and trained as a pilot before becoming a bombardier and navigator for the venerable A-6, a 1950s replacement for World War II carrier-borne bombers.
The awkward-looking plane with a big nose — nicknames included “Iron Tadpole” and “Drumstick” — saw extensive service in Vietnam, where its 18,000-pound bomb load was used to hit numerous targets.
Goodman and most of his squadron in 1983, though, had no experience in war.
“I had never seen live antiaircraft fire,” Goodman said. “I had never seen a missile trail.”
That would change quickly.
The A-6s in Goodman’s squadron launched for a quick bombing run on Syrian positions. They would approach from high altitude and pick up speed in a gradual dive onto the target.
“The pre-flight plan was feet-dry for 15 minutes, total,” Goodman said — 15 minutes over land. “One turn, target area. One turn feet wet.”
Goodman’s plane, armed with six 1,000-pound bombs, was supposed to hit a formation of Syrian tanks shy of the Bekaa valley, east of Beirut.
On the radio, he heard pilots describing heavy anti-aircraft fire as he flew.
He saw missiles flying up — telltale corkscrews of smoke.
“I look forward, I looked aft, I looked to the side,” he said.
Settled on six months He never saw the one that hit on Dec. 4. 1983.
“The aircraft rocked violently forward and everything went black,” he said.
On the ground, he didn’t have a chance to get away.
He was injured — broken ribs, a separated shoulder, a twisted knee. He was also surrounded — delivered by parachute to the Syrians who had been shooting at him.
“I remember coming to on the ground and having my hands tied and my head covered.”
Goodman was loaded into a pickup. His captors didn’t speak. His fingers went numb. Then his thumbs.
He considered how long he would be captive. “You can’t mentally wrap your head around 10 years, so I settled on six months,” he said.
He was taken to a military installation he later learned was in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
When the hood was removed he was in a dimly lit, carpeted room with carpets.
“I didn’t know what had happened to Mark Lange,” Goodman said, referring to the A-6 pilot he had been flying beside .
Days later, Goodman learned Lt. Lange ejected, but suffered a parachute malfunction. He died shortly after his capture.
Christmas dinner
Trained by men who had served in Vietnam, Goodman expected torture.
It didn’t turn out that way.
“I was interrogated on several occasions, I was only hit once,” he said.
Goodman got by with vague answers to Syrian questions.
Four days later he got an unexpected visitor from the International Red Cross.
“I had comfort that my family and my government knew where I was and the people who were holding me were playing by international rules.
From there his captivity took an unexpected turn.
In America, Goodman’s capture was national news and sparked a wave of emotion.
Willard Scott, a television personality and weatherman on NBC’s “Today Show,” asked viewers to send Goodman Christmas cards in Syria. The responded by the thousands.
Within days of his capture, Goodman’s Syrian captors began delivering those Christmas cards to his cell. “I spent my days reading those Christmas cards,” Goodman said. On Christmas Eve, 1983, he got another sign that his captivity was different from earlier wars.
The American ambassador arrived with a ham dinner and two beers.
And then the Rev. Jesse Jackson came to town.
31 days in captivity
A well-known U.S. civil rights leader, Jackson was eyeing the White House in 1983.
On the campaign trail, he called for Goodman’s release and the Syrian government responded with an invitation.
The Baptist minister was joined on his new year’s trip to Damascus by other African-American leaders. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright — who attained notice later as Barack Obama’s Chicago minister until 2008 — was in the group along with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Goodman didn’t know they had come to Damascus on a mission of mercy until he was pulled into a press conference.
Hafez Assad, father of current Syrian president Bashar Assad, had blinked.
Earlier that day, Goodman’s captors asked him to shave and shower and offered him clothing to wear without explanation. He was taken to a nearby hotel.
“I had never been a room with that many cameras,” Goodman remembered.
Goodman was freed Jan. 4, 1984, after 31 days in captivity.
He came home to acclaim. There was a marching band at the airport. President Ronald Reagan greeted him at the White House upon his return. In the American media, Bobby Goodman was a hero.
Now, Goodman says, he doesn’t think about the month he spent as a prisoner of war.
After he came home, he returned to his Navy career, retiring in Colorado after his final assignment at U.S. Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base.
The shootdown doesn’t wake him up at night. He’s not a hero. He owns a UPS Store on Fillmore Street.
“It doesn’t dominate my day to-day life,” he said.
Goodman says his experience can’t be viewed in the same context as present-day Syria. He’s reluctant to back a course of action.
“To some extent, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” he said.
Of his role in that brief event, he’s content to let it fade into history. “I still don’t feel I was doing anything superhuman.”