Air Force World By Aaron Church, Associate Editor Israel Joins F-35 Club support to Iraq, under a foreign military Israel has officially become an F-35 sale. The overall value of the deal is customer, after long speculation over estimated at $4.2 billion. screenshot how many of the fighters it would buy DOD officials have expressed sup- and when. port for Iraq acquiring an air superiority Israel signed an agreement with the fighter, preferably a Western aircraft like US in October to acquire 20 F-35 strike the F-16, to allow that country to provide fighters under a foreign military sale for its own air sovereignty. Iraq’s more valued at $2.75 billion. It will receive advanced aircraft, such as MiG-29s, USAF photo by MSgt. JasonWilkerson the aircraft between 2015 and 2017. were destroyed in numerous wars or Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador sent to Iran, which never returned them. to the US said the F-35 will “enhance "The proposed sale will allow the Iraqi Israel's ability to defend itself, by it- Air Force to modernize its air force by self, against any threat or combination acquiring Western-interoperable fighter of threats, from anywhere within the aircraft, thereby enabling Iraq to sup- Middle East." port both its own air defense needs Israeli Ministry of Defense Director- and coalition operations," the Defense General Udi Shani signed the letter of Security Cooperation Agency said in offer at an acceptance ceremony in announcing the potential sale. New York City Oct. 7. The FMS package would include the Israel will be the first nation to ac- AIM-7 Sparrow, AIM-9 Sidewinder, 500- quire the F-35 outside of the original and 2,000-pound laser guided bombs, nine countries partnering to develop and targeting pods, as well as conformal the aircraft. overwing extended range fuel tanks. F-16 Sale to Iraq Proposed B53 Dismantlement Authorized The Defense Department notified An entire type of nuclear weapon Congress of the potential sale of 18 will be eliminated from the US inven- F-16IQ fighters, munitions, and aircraft tory under plans announced by the Glitch Silences Minuteman ICBMs Fifty Minuteman III ICBMS were temporarily out of contact with launch authorities on Oct. 23, according to Air Force Global Strike Command. The 319th Missile Squadron, headquartered at F. E. Warren AFB, Wyo., experienced “a disruption of communications” between its five launch control centers and their missiles, said Lt. Col. John Thomas, an AFGSC spokesman. Evidence pointed to a mechanical failure associated with the missile com- plex’s primary communications system. Multilayered safety, security, and command and control systems remained available to missile control crews throughout the incident, assuring there was no danger of unauthorized missile launch at any time during the disruption, Thomas said. The missiles’ launch capability was unaffected. Electronic queries sent from the launch control center to verify the health and security of the missile sites became unsynchronized, transmitting simultane- ously over the same frequency, effectively canceling transmission altogether. Missileers diagnosed and isolated the malfunction within 45 minutes, switch- ing control of all 50 missiles to a single launch control center, according to Thomas. The LCCs normally control only 10 missiles each. All but one LCC was quickly re-integrated into the network, the other re- maining offline for additional study of the anomaly. There was no evidence of tampering or malicious activity. Air Force technical experts noted marked similarities between the incident and others reported at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., and Minot AFB, N.D., in the late 1990s, Thomas said. 12 AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2010 National Nuclear Security Administra- The weapon, with a reported nine- F-15s Depart Tyndall … tion in October. megaton yield, was a key part of the The 95th Fighter Squadron at Tyndall By Aaron Church, Associate Editor The NNSA announced that dismantle- US nuclear deterrent until its retirement AFB, Fla., has been inactivated, mark- ment of the B53 nuclear bomb inventory in 1997. The B61-11 tactical nuclear ing the formal end of the F-15 training will soon begin at the Department of bomb replaced the B53 in the Air Force mission there. The Eagles have been Energy’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Tex. inventory, but the current number of a fixture at Tyndall since 1983. The United States introduced this stockpiled B53s remains classified. The 325th Fighter Wing gave up thermonuclear bomb type into its Dismantlement of the weapons will its 48 F-15s as part of the Air Force's stockpile in 1962. About the size of a entail physically separating the high- divestiture of about 250 legacy fighters minivan, it weighs some 10,000 pounds explosive trigger mechanism from the for Fiscal 2010. and was designed to be carried by nuclear warhead, then processing the The aircraft began departing in April, the Air Force’s B-47, B-52, and B-58 material and components for reuse, and the final aircraft lifted off for Ed- bombers. demilitarization, recycling, or disposal. wards AFB, Calif. —where it has joined A four-ship flight of USAF and Republic of Korea Air Force F-16s performs a flyover at Piung Har- 11.10.2010 bor, South Korea, as part of the year-long commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War. The war, begun in June 1950, would last three years, and over the next 57 years more than three and a half million American military members would serve a tour of duty in South Korea. AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2010 13 Air Force World assessment purposes,” according to a Do We Need a National Space Policy? recently published Air Force fact sheet. Development of the pod began in Discussion of President Obama’s National Space Policy, released in June, the late 1990s, leveraging technology has centered on the policy’s content. But does the nation really need a national associated with the F-22 program. policy governing space? John B. Sheldon, a visiting professor at Air University However, details about the pod’s design, at Maxwell AFB, Ala., posed that question at a George C. Marshall Institute development, production and inventory panel on the new space policy in Washington, D.C., Oct. 6. size remain classified. “We don’t have an air policy,” said Sheldon, “we have a set of policies The Air Force did confirm that the that govern air issues, from military right through to the FAA. The Air Force pod is not an interim step pending cooperates with the FAA on a daily basis, and it doesn’t need White House development of the F-15E’s own active guidance to do that.” electronically scanned array radar, but Ideally, Sheldon argued, space should be removed from the “politicized serves a separate and unique role. environment” of White House policy, leaving agencies such as NASA and DOD to cooperate in the same manner as agencies already do in other domains. Cyber Force Is Operational “Part of the problem is [that] we in the space community think we’re special. Twenty-fourth Air Force, charged with From a strategic perspective, we’re not. We bring something unique to the USAF’s cyber operations role, achieved strategic equation, but we’re not special,” he said. full operational capability Oct. 1. At the implementation stage, the White House policy runs up against yet "Cyberspace is critical to today's joint another obstacle, the lack of what Sheldon referred to as a “grand strategy,” military operations, and 24th Air Force is which he argues has been absent since the end of the Cold War. “I think, proud to be the Air Force's component ultimately, [the implementation of] any space policy, regardless of which to US Cyber Command," AFSPC Com- Administration, will founder on the rocks of a lack of a US grand strategy,” mander Gen. C. Robert Kehler said in he said. announcing FOC. He added that 24th Air “America must first prioritize what we want to do in the world, and how we’re Force is now "a full operational partner going to do it,” before constructing what risks becoming simply another layer on the joint cyber team." of bureaucracy, something requiring nonpartisan consensus. The 24th was formally activated in During the Cold War, Sheldon noted, “the grand strategy was called contain- August 2009, at Lackland AFB, Tex., ment … and had bipartisan support.” The danger posed by al Qaeda today, he combining the service's information added, “is simply not the existential threat the Soviet Union posed,” explaining operations, network warfare, and com- why such a strategy remains elusive today. bat communications functions under one roof. Following the FOC milestone, the Air NASA’s test fleet—following the unit’s location capabilities and overhead sur- Force's LeMay Center for Doctrine De- inactivation ceremony Sept. 21. veillance and reconnaissance support velopment and Education announced With the drawdown at Tyndall, the Or- to ground troops, the Air Force said. completion of the new cyber opera- egon Air National Guard's 173rd Fighter The pod’s synthetic aperture radar tions doctrine outlining command and Wing at Klamath Falls Airport-Kingsley “provides detailed maps for surveillance, organizational structures, computer Field will formally assume responsibility coordinate generation, and bomb impact network design and planning, and for the Air Force’s F-15 training mission. Tyndall will remain the training base for USAF’s F-22 Raptor fighters. … And Elmendorf The last F-15 assigned to Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, left on Sept. 24, completing the drawdown of the base’s F-15s under the combat USAF photo by A1C Sean Martin air forces restructuring plan.