A KC-46 refuels an F-35

WASHINGTON: Tankers and cargo aircraft could in future carry their own counter-air missiles — or even launch missile-carrying drones — to help them survive ever-more sophisticated enemy air defenses, Air Mobility Command head Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost says.

“We have hardpoints on the C-17; we have hardpoints on the KC-46. It’s not a hard stretch to think that we could put one or two missiles on there for self defense,” she told the Mitchell Institute today.

Van Ovost is keen on pushing creative ideas, including the use of “attritables” such as missiles and drones, to ensure the survivability of the air mobility fleet in future warfare with Russia and China — recognizing that large, lumbering tankers and cargo jets make relatively easy and high value targets.  

“We’ve been looking at high-value aircraft self-defense in all kinds of different ways, and not just in a single domain but in multiple domains — and I really can’t talk much more about that, but that has been on our minds.”

Interestingly, Air Force Research Laboratory has just begun exploring possible development of a new family of multi-mission drones, with a near-term priority on “High Value Airborne Asset Protection.” However, Van Ovost said up to now AMC doesn’t have any experiments planned with self-defense drones.

She also waxed optimistic about the DARPA’s Gremlins project — which is seeking to demonstrate the feasibility of launching and recapturing armed drone swarms from the back of a C-130 — despite slow progress. During its first capture test in October, the docking system that allows the X-61A Gremlins Air Vehicle (GAV) to attach to the aircraft failed, although DARPA’s press release noted that it did successfully validate “all autonomous formation flying positions and safety features” of the drones.

“I like the Gremlins idea,” Van Ovost enthused. “I’d like to be able to rearm defensive counter-air, and frankly offensive counter-air, by flying into the back of the airplane, and turning it and sending it back out, or having one orbit around us so that it can be the head-on shot.”

And while the concept is still just a gleam in Elon Musk’s eye, Van Ovost is also enthusiastic about the possibility of using a rocket for point-to-point delivery of cargo.

“At US Transportation Command, we’ve looked at what point-to-point could do for us, and we’re moving forward on point-to-point space lift,” she said. “I think in the future, you could see something like this, but we will partner with the Space Force on what types of loads and what that would look like as far as the battlefield scheme of maneuver.”

TRANSCOM back in October inked a voluntary a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with SpaceX to investigate using SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy launch vehicle to deliver cargo and personnel — via launch and land on the ground, launch and land at sea, or a combination of the two. Musk’s vision if for the reusable Starship to eventually take humans to Mars, but SpaceX has seen a series of setbacks in testing. Its fourth attempt to lift a Starship prototype off its pad by a mere 10 kilometers and safely re-land ended in yet another crash on March 30.

Van Ovost was quick, however, to note that in the near term, the first, and foundational, requirement to ensure survivability of the tanker and cargo fleets is being able to see the threats.

“The number one thing we have to have to help our survivability is battlespace awareness,” she stressed. Right now, the majority of our fleet takes off and they have zero real battlespace awareness. The first thing we need to know is ‘where is the fight, what is happening, do I need to turn around? Just merely having battlespace awareness means I’m going to be more resilient, and we have more options to make decisions to survive.”

She explained that simply by virtue of being connected to a network, everyone connected to that network will be able to see if a C-17 or KC-135 tanker is in trouble. “Everybody will know that that missile is airborne, and where it’s headed to,” she said.

This means fighters can be scrambled to cover the targeted aircraft, or they can be sent forward to hopefully intercept incoming missiles farther away. Or the AMC aircraft can shoot the missile down using its own defensive counter-air weapons. Or use sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities housed in a pod.

Van Ovost also is eager to explore how AMC can help — via new missions such as equipping tanker aircraft as communications nodes — the joint force transition from 20th century ways of warfare to the emerging Joint Warfighting Concept’s vision of All Domain Operations. One of the key components of that concept is focused on how the joint force will deal with contested logistics, both abroad and at home bases.

This is one reason why AMC is so dedicated to helping forward the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program to build a military Internet of Things to underpin Joint All Domain Command and Control.

She confirmed, as hinted at last year by former Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper, that Boeing’s KC-46 tanker has been selected by the Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) to receive a communications software pod as part of the ABMS “capability releaseONE.” The pod allows the tanker to play the role of a flying cell tower, translating between non-compatible platforms such as the F-22 and F-35 fighters, as well as to push data to tactical aircraft in contested air space. It also will carry software capable of data processing at the edge, and creating potential ‘courses of action’ for use by commanders, Roper explained in January. 

“Frankly, what’s inside the pod can change … from a C2 node to a secure processing [node] to maybe defensive capabilities, right. We’re just working out a pod that’s got the size weight and power, and then all the different things that you could do with that pod,” Van Ovost said.

In addition, she said, AMC is looking to how such pods might also equip the KC-135 Stratotanker, the C-17 and other aircraft.