U.S. Niger Airlift Relied On New Networking Tech For Mobility Fleet

When U.S. Air Force mobility aircraft airlifted troops and equipment from two bases in Niger this summer, they flew with a hodgepodge of different operational and prototype networking systems that provided more situational awareness than the fleet has had before.

The operation is a preview of where Air Mobility Command (AMC) is trying to go as part of a broad situational awareness push, though it faces strict funding hurdles to get there.

“We intentionally put ourselves in a position to have the connectivity for the operation in Africa,” AMC boss Gen. Mike Minihan tells Aviation Week. “The attributes that I had were exactly what we wanted, which is the crews that are operating on the ground and then in the air with the maximum amount of situational awareness.”

Minihan has led a push within AMC that he calls “25 by ’25,” meaning having 25% of the mobility fleet outfitted with new connectivity systems by next year. He recently told Congress that the fleet will fall short of that goal, largely because of limited funding to buy systems.

For the Niger retrograde, ordered by the government of that country earlier this year, AMC aircraft moved 641 total passengers and 3,317 short tons of cargo. The Air Force had been operating drones and other missions from two locations, Air Base 101 and 201. The latter, located near the city of Niamey, had been operational since 2019.

AMC says the fleet, mostly Boeing C-17s, used a mix of legacy, prototype and repurposed mission systems. The command has been operating with new systems such as the Sierra Nevada Corp.-made Airlift/Tanker Open Mission Systems kit, which largely uses existing antennas and cables connected to a server rack in a box inside the aircraft to provide line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight data connections using networks such as Link 16, Tactical Targeting Network Technology and the Mobile Ad-hoc Network. AMC is also using the Collins Aerospace Real-Time Information in the Cockpit data link modification, first developed for KC-135s, and now used on C-17s and C-130s. AMC, along with the Air National Guard, has focused on small-scale development for this sort of networking as broader Air Force advancements have largely been prioritized for fighter and bomber fleets.

These systems were evaluated in recent exercises, such as last year’s Mobility Guardian 2023 in the Pacific and the series of Bamboo Eagle events hosted out of Nellis AFB, Nevada. But the Niger operation appears to be the first real-world contingency that utilized the prototypes.

Minihan says having the aircraft connected while in flight to the base was important so they could have a real understanding of the environment they would land in.

“Even though the jets were based out of Europe and supporting operations in the African continent, the second we took off we had the connectivity we needed to understand load plans, runway status, force protection issues, flight plans, all of those things were well coordinated and up to the minute,” he says.

This was different from, for example, 2021’s withdrawal from Afghanistan that had C-17 crews not completely aware of the evolving situation on the ground as they were en route.

“At the end of the day all that contributes to the flexibility to handle a dynamic environment,” he says. “Weather, fuel, force protection, blue force, any other force operating in the [area]. So crews don’t have to make a radio call, they’ve got the command and control echelon, they’ve got the connectivity that delivers the latest intel picture, they’ve got connectivity that delivers the latest load plans, diplomatic clearances, all that stuff puts the captains, the majors, tech sergeants out there that are operating these things in the best possible position to have success for the mission.”

AMC has largely been forced to use operation and maintenance funding to bring on prototypes and find new ways to connect its fleet without acquisition funding for programs of record. Minihan says there is a growing understanding in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that connectivity is important for the mobility enterprise.

Minihan himself is getting set to retire from command in the coming weeks and says though there has been progress on the effort over the past three years, there is still work to do.

“We’ll continue to work the resourcing to try to make this successful,” he says. “There’s a data-based argument at this point that’s over three years in the making that shows that connectivity is a game changer on the battlefield for mobility.”