Podcast: Confronting New Chinese Nuclear Weapons

Aviation Week editors discuss hot topics from the Air Force Association’s annual meeting including China’s massive buildup in nuclear capability, a change in acquisition approach at the Pentagon and the next competition for aerial refueling tankers.

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Rush transcript

Jen DiMascio:

Hi, welcome to the Check Six podcast. I'm Jen DiMascio, the executive editor for defense in space, and I'm here with Defense Editor, Stephen Trimble, and Pentagon Editor, Brian Everstine. We're here at the Gaylord conference center in National Harbor, Maryland, and the occasion is the Air Force Association's annual symposium.

Jen DiMascio:

The event really kicked off with some interesting discussion. It was the Air Force Secretary, Frank Kendall's first Air Force symposium. His last military role was as the top civilian leading acquisitions for the Pentagon. And now he's come back after another stint in industry and a long career in defense to lead the Air Force. So Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit about what he had to say because well, it's interesting.

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, it's important to put Kendall's appearance here in sort of time and place in the Defense Department budget process. The program objective memorandum is due next month, or is going to be finalized next month. That's going to set basically the first Biden administration defense budget for the next five years, and all of these big decisions on NGAD, on nuclear modernization, on F-35, B-21, all of that is in those documents. And right now, they're being hashed out in great detail within the Pentagon between the services to get that done. So as a result, they don't want to talk in much granularity about what they're actually trying to do and the specifics of the details.

Steve Trimble:

But in broad strokes, what we did hear from Kendall's speech today, or speech this week and his appearances, was that they're absolutely committed to the modernization agenda and the national defense strategy that really has been in place for several years, but he gave us kind of a different idea, or a different perspective, on how he wants to do it.

Steve Trimble:

If you go back into Frank Kendall's career, you see somebody who has been at kind of the forefront of defense innovation for 30, 40 years, but definitely reflects much more of a conventional, disciplined, pragmatic style than what we've seen in the last few years under the previous administration, where there was a commitment to really radical changes and speed at almost any cost really. So I think it's going to manifest some changes in a variety of programs, whether you're talking about next generation or dominance or things like the advanced battle management system. So actually, and I can ask Brian here, what did you hear about Kendall's new approach on [the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS)]?

Brian Everstine:

Well, Kendall's took over about a year into chief of staff general Brown's time, and his famous mantra is accelerate, change, or lose. And in that time, ABMS seemed like one way that the air force was trying to accelerate change. But with Kendall coming into office, that change just kind of slammed on the brakes. There was an announce first capability release that was going to be a pod attached to KC-46 to help transmit some data. That has kind of slowed. There was going to be a second capability release, focused more on software, looking at the Homeland defense system, and that has pretty much been completely halted pending his review.

Brian Everstine:

So in his keynote, he talked about how ABMS didn't have a target for an actual operational capability. It was the big on-ramps we've seen were relatively aimless, he said. So he's kind of wants the Air Force to recalibrate and focus on basically producing something that matters and quickly.

Brian Everstine:

And in that vein, he also talked about the air force's hypersonic attempts, I guess. We've seen three failures on the arrow, on the DARPA program. And he said he was not satisfied with, one, how the tests are progressing, but also just the Air Force's idea of the role and the mission of hypersonics, and he wants to see that to be re-looked at. So once they are able to progress and produce something that is operational, they have an idea of how to use it and what to do with it.

Jen DiMascio:

So in the Roper era, there was a lot of rhetoric around go fast, fail fast. Right? So how do you guys think that applies to the hypersonic issue if the test program's not going well? Do you fail and get out, or do you fail and learn from it and continue in a new way? I mean, is that sort of where he is in saying let's review the progress so that you take what you've learned in this period of frenzy prototyping and channel that into something that works?

Steve Trimble:

Well, so I mean, how fast they go on hypersonics, it's almost... It's interesting to say because somehow Russia and China have gone faster, and that's just really frustrating to see. They're not supposed to be faster with their sorts of systems. And I don't think it necessarily is that they're faster. Russia and China just never lit up on the gas. They remained committed to it for a longer period of time. And they weren't distracted by several of the other things that we were, say global war on terrorism and that sort of thing. Coming into 2017, 2018, the last administration really slammed the foot on the gas, so to speak, with hypersonic programs and really tried to push them out there as quickly as possible. And I think what Kendall is starting to talk about is, okay, we need, first of all, to understand what we're going to do with them.

Steve Trimble:

Perhaps there's not a robust concept of operations available. And unless you have that concept of operations, and that's something that General (Mark) Kelly was talking about. He's the Air Combat Command chief. That kind of really does inform the requirements and the acquisition strategy and all these things. And so they want to get that in place before they move too much further down the road. But that's not to say... I mean, I think they're still going forward with arrow. Early operational capability for arrow is in 12 months, followed by hypersonic attack cruise missile in 2027 or so. I don't see them necessarily slowing, but I think they want to get their ducks in a row. Where I think Kendall's approach will specifically affect things on ABMS, as Brian was talking about, is... The on-ramp events that we saw stage under the regime of Will Roper and the previous secretary.

Steve Trimble:

The whole idea was let's bring the technologies, let's see what works, let's see what doesn't, but there was no real plan to transition those technologies. It was sort of, if we can show that this is valuable, then a program office will pick it up and they'll ask for the funding for it. But there was no prior understanding that that would happen. And I think that's the kind of thing that they're probably not going to do now. The way Kendall talked about it, it sounds more like if you're going to do it a prototype demonstration, if it works, there's going to be a plan before the demonstration to get it into a program and get it fielded with the whole doctrine, operations, logistics, planning, and all that. And that may slow down things some in a way. However, if you don't have all those things, they tend to get messy anyways.

Jen DiMascio:

And it also aligns with some things that I've been hearing from people about the budget. If you're going to look for a program, if you're not sure whether it's real as a technology program, look for the dollars in DOTMILPF. If there's a tail...

Steve Trimble:

Oh yeah.

Jen DiMascio:

... then you'll see it. And otherwise, it may just be on paper.

Steve Trimble:

Right. When we're talking about DOTMILPF, we're talking about the sustainment part of it, the training, the infrastructure, all of that being put into place. Now, sometimes the emphasis on that can lead to a paralysis in the acquisition process that, really, they wanted so hard to get away from in the last administration, because they felt like that things just were moving way too slow. And I know that nobody wants to go back to that, but to try to be at least be more mindful and bring that more into the process and not having completely ignored. I think that, I mean, certainly in terms of advanced battle management system, that's something we're going to see.

Jen DiMascio:

Well, that brings me sort of to the next point of the discussion, because there's really a new level of urgency around getting technologies into the field faster. I thought I heard that from Kendall because of his warnings about what China's been doing. Well, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what he had to say on that front.

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, sure. So it was a new warning about China's nuclear capabilities, something specific, but also conditional at the same time where Kendall said that there's the potential that they will have the capability to launch attacks globally from space. Not to space or in space, but from space to the ground. We asked him about that in his press conference, the reporters here at the show, and he elaborated that he was talking specifically about capability for a fractional orbital bombardment system or FOBS. This is somewhat well known as a Soviet capability in the Cold War that did not come to fruition, but was something that was pursued in the 1960s. And the idea being really quite interesting. I mean, it's basically taking ICBM, turning it into more of an orbital launcher by adding... If it's a two-stage ICBM, adding a third stage to get it to orbital velocity.

Steve Trimble:

After you launch it, it's called fractional orbit, which means... So it doesn't complete a full orbit. As it gets into a certain zone, that third stage will fire a retro rocket, release the payload, being a nuclear warhead, and the warhead would reenter, really from about 150,000 feet, really not high at all, although still above the Karman line, so technically in space, but just barely. But then from that release point, it could have a very unpredictable trajectory. So that would make it very difficult to spot. And also, it would come from a different place. Right now, all of our early warning systems are sort of conveniently located facing north towards the polar ice cap where we think a Soviet or Russian attack would come from, or even Chinese. This is the kind of capability where you could actually launch towards the south, where I would go over Antarctica and then come up really into sort of the soft underbelly of our homeland defenses, where we have the weakest warning systems. So on two different levels, being much more difficult to see.

Steve Trimble:

So this capability actually had been pursued by China in the past. It was a paper written by a couple of Stanford researchers in 1992 that described a program that China initiated in 1965 but was canceled about eight years later due to technical difficulties, and also the fact that, at that point, 1973, the U.S. and China had become friends to a certain extent, but they no longer pursued that capability. And it wasn't really clear. Frank Kendall just sort of put that out there. It wasn't really clear what the provenance of the information was, if it was based on intelligence assessments, but I don't think he would just sort of put that out there if there was nothing behind it in the classified world, but he didn't elaborate on the sourcing and the level of interest from China in that capability. He just said that they could do it.

Steve Trimble:

That information does not come in a vacuum. I mean, there's other... There's been just a whole string of disclosures about what the Biden administration officials and even Trump administration officials last year, raising the alarm really about Chinese nuclear capabilities and ambitions, starting with about a year and a half ago, talking about a hypersonic glide vehicle being tested on an ICBM, not unlike the Russia's Avangard system, which is basically the same thing, to this year, the arms control negotiator for the US said in Geneva, back in June I think it was, that China has a Burevestnik type capability, which is referring to Russia's nuclear powered cruise missile. And then there was the disclosure of these huge ICBM fields, silo fields out in the Chinese desert over the summer. So there's a lot going on there.

Jen DiMascio:

Yeah.

Steve Trimble:

And we'll see where it all goes.

Brian Everstine:

And in his keynote, in the beginning, Kendall talked about the silos and the expansion of China's nuclear capability and said that they're developing a first strike capability. And so he spent probably about three quarters of his entire speech focused on this China threat. He said, essentially, literally he took this job because of China's modernization. He wanted to come back to the Pentagon and specifically to leave the air force, because what he has seen in China's progression.

Brian Everstine:

And early on in the conference, Lt. Gen. (Clinton) Hinote, who basically runs air force futures, looking at what the air force needs to be, talked about this China threat threat and said, "Time's up. We need to make changes now." In an interview, he talked about the 2018 national defense strategy, laid out a good idea, but it wasn't acted on. And it was just a nice thought, but the air force didn't make any infrastructure changes, didn't make enough of a fleet change to address that threat. And Kendall and his speech, we've heard it a lot from the air force, but he basically still called on congress, said, "You are the problem. Let us cut these planes, or we're not going to be safe."

Steve Trimble:

Right. And the last thing I'd note on that is that even though this warning has been going out and all of these claims seem credible, especially the ICBM silos, we could see them, I mean, the fact is that there's no estimate out there that says China has more than 350 nuclear warheads at the moment. We have 5,500, Russia has over 6,000. They are way behind everybody else. However, I mean, that almost kind of makes the case for why they would be interested in something like a FOBS or a hypersonic glide vehicle, because that could allow them to overcome some of the numerical disadvantages in certain ways to sneak essentially a nuclear warhead past our defenses.

Steve Trimble:

Not saying that that's what's happening, but there is an overall context. And we're also, at this very moment, conducting a nuclear posture review, that's reassessing the entire nuclear modernization program, and at the same time that there's a lot of scrutiny from congress, some lawmakers who are questioning whether we need the ground-based strategic deterrent program, which is the replacement for the Minuteman 3 ICBM. Or if not getting rid of it, then just delaying it and keeping Minuteman 3 for 10 or 20 years longer. So all of that, it's important context for that discussion.

Jen DiMascio:

Well, that's all very fascinating and pretty scary, but I mean, there are so many reviews happening right now. I guess we'll see, come next February, the outcome of the nuclear posture review, the budget. All of these reviews that are in place are kind of bundling up.

Steve Trimble:

Right. So, I mean, this is what happens in any administration change. Basically the Biden administration... Kendall just was reconfirmed several weeks ago. He's getting his team in place. So it's going to take several months to put their stamp on the way budget influences their policies, and really, I mean, even the 2023 budget is just the beginning. I mean, if you go back to the Trump administration, the 2017 budget was basically continuation of the Obama budget. 2018 was just the beginning. I think they Pat Shanahan, the defense deputy secretary, at one point referred to the fiscal year of 2020, the third one that they submitted, as the masterpiece, because that was the time where they could really translate their policy ambitions into budgets...

Jen DiMascio:

Yeah.

Steve Trimble:

... at a very detailed level. And I'm not sure they even accomplished that. I think they would even be disappointed about how that worked out, but I wouldn't expect any faster of a process in this administration

Jen DiMascio:

About getting out of time, but I did want to touch on one other area, and that is the burgeoning competition for an aerial refueling tanker, because Lockheed Martin has put out its concept for what would be a bridge tanker. The next piece of that perennial saga over who will refuel the air forces fleet.

Brian Everstine:

Yeah, it is a burgeoning competition, but so far it seems relatively one-sided, especially at this conference. We had Lockheed Martin make a big splashy introduction of their LMXT, what is known as the MRTT, and we had fancy graphics, big briefings laying out their plan for increased fuel load, bigger range, or bigger plane. And in response, Boeing's basically said, "We're just going to wait for the requirements." They're still working out the kinks in the KC-46, and they're just going to wait to see what the air force lays out.

Jen DiMascio:

So Lockheed is essentially taking the Airbus MRTT platform and putting its logo on it, or what?

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, and making some changes, some big changes that are relevant to the bridge tanker competition. The thing that... So the air force hasn't set the requirements. They haven't set up the acquisition strategy. So what Lockheed is doing is basically putting their stamp on what they think the air force should do. And of course, what Lockheed is suggesting are the things that heavily favor their aircraft. So they're showing that, if you make this competition about who can deliver the most fuel at range, the A330, now as the LMXT, will blow away the KC-46. It can deliver, well, I think it's 59,000 pounds more fuel than a KC-46, because Lockheed, with the LMXT, adds about 26,000 pounds of fuel, more than what is already available on the A330 MRTT.

Steve Trimble:

So at the expense probably of cargo, the KC-46 can carry 18 pallets, including main deck cargo, because it has cargo door. The LMXT does not have a cargo door, and it's limited to six pallets, smaller pallets in the belly of the aircraft. So they have the ability to flex that, depending on what the air force actually decides and their requirements. And I'm sure if the air force actually does prioritize cargo, Lockheed will respond to that. But yeah, that's that's where they're going with it.

Brian Everstine:

And in his press conference early on, Lieutenant General Hinote basically said that he does not expect the requirements to change much at all for a bridge tanker. So if that might be good news from KC-X. And so that, who knows, could favor Boeing, but then he said with the follow on, with KC-Z for the future tanker, that's when they want to, I think, basically said, re-invent air refueling. Look at stealth, look at more autonomy, look at even a blended wing shape, and just who knows what it could be, but...

Steve Trimble:

Right, and the other factor in the bridge tinker competition is going to be pricing and the way that... It's not just the requirements, it's also the acquisition strategy. Is it going to be a fixed price contract? Is it going to be low cost, technically acceptable? How will the air force value differences between the aircraft? If the air force does award extra credit for greater fuel offload, that does favor A330. However, depending on... Companies can price their offerings however they want. And we've seen with Boeing, they've been willing in the past to price well below what their actual cost of the materials are. With KC46, they've lost over $5 billion. $2 billion was what they underbid the contract for, but then they've lost a lot of money because of technical issues. So anyway, but that is... We'll see how that all that plays out, but it's going to be, as you say, a perpetual saga, that I think it's going to be a very heated competition, very intense, and very public competition that Congress has already heated up about.

Jen DiMascio:

All right, well, thanks. This has been a great discussion. There's a lot of new things to chew on, but a lot more to kind of look forward to in the future. So with that, I'll say don't miss a single episode of Check Six. You can subscribe to the podcast in apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify. Thanks for listening.