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00:00On the ground at Airspace and Cyber 2025, where senior leadership is weighing in on the state of the Air Force.
00:08Plus, we go one-on-one with the brawler.
00:10See why this piece of hardware could be bad news for enemy drones.
00:14And we check in with Resonance Sciences for the latest on the Razor.
00:23Hello and welcome to Weapons and Warfare, a show made for people who want to know more about our national defense.
00:29Our goal here is to help you have an informed conversation about what's happening with our nation's military.
00:35For Straight Arrow News, I'm your host, Ryan Robertson, and we are coming to you from the AFA's Airspace and Cyber event in National Harbor, Maryland.
00:44As per the use, the first item on the agenda was a huge draw for the crowd.
00:50And that's why the state of the Air Force is the subject of this week's debrief.
00:53I will say it again, innovation, innovation, innovation.
01:00It's no China, China, China like his predecessor, but the new Air Force Secretary has a clear vision for the branch's path forward.
01:07In his first major address since being confirmed as the 27th Secretary of the Air Force,
01:14Dr. Troy Mink looked and sounded the part.
01:17An Air Force veteran with years of government service to his credit,
01:21Mink pointed to the importance of building on current air and Space Force capabilities.
01:27I mean, it's plain and simple.
01:28It seems pretty obvious to everybody.
01:31I hope it is pretty obvious to everybody.
01:34Our job is to maintain that dominance going forward, that advantage the U.S. has had.
01:40Mink went on to say, doing that means improving readiness and staying ahead of potential adversaries, like the Chinese.
01:48The only way we're going to maintain our advantage is we have to innovate, and we have to innovate faster than our adversaries.
01:56And again, it's a rate of change thing.
01:59No matter how far you are ahead, unless you're innovating faster than they are, then you're going to lose that advantage.
02:05You will lose that advantage.
02:07Mink also hit on the importance of maintaining and improving force readiness by maximizing all available resources and spending wisely.
02:18On the subject of modernization, Mink touted the recently announced F-47 6th Gen Fighter,
02:24as well as the B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber, and the addition of new engines and radar to the B-52 Bomber Fleet.
02:33When you watch what our adversaries are doing, unless you're moving faster than they are, no matter how far you are ahead, they will overtake you.
02:41No question about it.
02:42We've seen it in some areas.
02:43Now, we're doing great, and it's not just innovation and technology.
02:46I'm going to hit on this again and again.
02:47It's innovation across the board.
02:49And if we, as the leadership, are not doing everything we can to support you moving fast and being innovative,
02:55you need to tell us that, because we will not be successful without that.
03:00Next up was the current Air Force Chief of Staff, General David Alvin, in what was likely his last address in front of hundreds of airmen.
03:09The soon-to-be-retired Alvin acknowledged there's room for growth and improvement.
03:14But he pointed to a highly publicized recent event as evidence of the Air Force's ability to answer when the call comes in.
03:23Operation Midnight Hammer, this was the largest operational employment, kinetic employment of B-2s in their history.
03:32Over 100 aircraft, thousands of man-hours in planning and execution.
03:38This took airmen from across the bomber force, the fighter force, the mobility force.
03:45It took ISR, it took command and control, all to come together to put almost a half a million pounds of destruction exactly where we wanted it.
03:52The jury is still out on exactly how much damage June 22nd's Midnight Hammer attack did to Iran's nuclear program.
04:00But as Alvin pointed out, it did yield some immediate results.
04:05But about 30 hours after this, President Trump declared that there was a ceasefire and the 12-day war was over.
04:11We didn't have a surge or mobilization or preparing our force for a protracted conflict in the Middle East.
04:17We re-established deterrence.
04:20And we were ready to go.
04:22Also on the General's checklist, making sure his airmen are ready to move at a fast enough pace to make sure the Air Force keeps its air dominance edge over near-peer adversaries.
04:33Last time I checked, our mission statement doesn't say fly, fight, and be relevant.
04:40Last time I checked, our mission says fly, fight, and win air power anytime, anywhere.
04:46So if you want to know what the pace is, that's the pace.
04:50We have to move out at the pace to win.
04:52If we're not getting there, then we need to find another gear.
04:54The 23rd Air Force Chief of Staff said one example of that kind of urgency can be found in the F-22 Raptor's eventual successor.
05:04After years of work, hundreds of test hours, thousands of years of man years in the lab,
05:12the President announced the F-47 as the 6th Gen Fighter.
05:15It's the platform that, along with all of the rest of the systems, is going to ensure dominance into the future.
05:22We've got to go fast.
05:23I've got to tell you, team, it's almost 2026.
05:28The team is committed to get the first one flying in 2028.
05:32In the few short months since we've made the announcement,
05:35they are already beginning to manufacture the first article.
05:39We're ready to go fast.
05:42We have to go fast.
05:43As for his impending retirement,
05:46if the 61-year-old is feeling sentimental about bringing his 39-year career to a close,
05:52he's not showing it.
05:54The subject never came up in his 30-minute address.
05:58And we now know the President's choice to replace General Alvin.
06:02Meet General Ken Kruiser Wilsbach.
06:04The presumptive 24th Air Force Chief of Staff most recently led Air Combat Command
06:09and was planning to retire himself after 40 years of service,
06:14but decided to reverse course and take on the task of leading the Air Force pending Senate confirmation.
06:21One of the great minds of our time, Dave Chappelle, said modern problems require modern solutions.
06:30For our Weapon of the Week, we have just that.
06:34It's called the Brawler, or the Battery Revolving Advanced Weapons Launcher Reconfigurable.
06:41And if we take a small step back, we can see exactly what that means.
06:45This unit is basically a one-stop shop to rock some drones.
06:50It has different form factors for Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rockets, or APKWS rockets.
06:58That's basically the go-to weapon right now for countering small unmanned aerial vehicles,
07:03but doing it in a cheap, relatively cheap way,
07:07using hydro rockets with advanced sensors on them instead of multi-million dollar missiles.
07:11However, this system is very modular, so you can take off the APKWS launchers if you want.
07:18You can put on some pylons for some AIM-9 or different types of air defense missiles.
07:24You can see on the very top, it has a forward-looking infrared sensor or a FLIR device.
07:30You can put different types of antenna on this, all different sorts of sensors.
07:34Basically, if it can fit on the Brawler, the Brawler can use it.
07:39Why does something like this exist?
07:42Well, there's a lot of European partners out there and some other folks that SNC wasn't really able to talk about who.
07:49We know they exist, and we know that they need answers for dealing with all different sorts of drones
07:54and possibly some fast-moving jets.
07:57A unit like this is able to bring them that multi-form factor approach
08:01and really kind of a jack-of-all-trades.
08:05Do you want to take down a drone?
08:06This can do it.
08:07Do you want to take down a larger Class 5 drone?
08:09This can do it.
08:10Do you want to take down a jet?
08:11This can do it.
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08:47All right, folks, for Coms Check this week, we are talking to a company we first told you about last year, Resident Sciences.
08:53And the thing that really caught our eye was their Razor unit.
08:56It kind of measures how stealth a stealth craft really is.
09:00Here to talk a little bit more about how the business has been going the past year,
09:03Micah North with Resident.
09:04Thank you so much for joining us today.
09:05Yeah, thanks a lot.
09:06Appreciate it.
09:07Yeah, things have been progressing quite a bit since last year.
09:09You know, lots of growth this year.
09:11Lots of growth in, not only in the Razors, but also in the Radomes, which we have behind you.
09:16Different Radome systems and a lot in the electronics.
09:19So we've kind of been fortunate.
09:20Someone asked me the other day, you know, where really the growth has come from.
09:24And it's really been more so in just across the board, you know, a little bit of everything out there.
09:29Sure.
09:29We're continuing to roll Razors out and add new functionality into the system, giving new capabilities.
09:35We have international partners now that are interested in Razors.
09:38So we're starting to go all over the place with it.
09:41That's great.
09:42That's great.
09:42Now, obviously, a lot of this stuff is going to be secret sauce.
09:45We can't get too far into the weeds on it.
09:47But you mentioned you had a few dozen Razors out in the field right now.
09:51There's about 35 Razors out in the field right now in various different companies and government
09:57sites and prime contractors.
10:02We're also a subsystem guys, too, as well.
10:04So and, you know, one thing I'll mention is Razors not just for LO vehicles, so to speak,
10:09but we're also building capability in there to do radome characterization and antenna characterization.
10:14It's also looking at, you know, threat emulation as well, which really opens the portfolio up
10:20to a lot of different other platforms that are outside of what you would consider your
10:24traditional LO vehicles.
10:27Absolutely.
10:27When you talk about the threat emulation, can you kind of briefly talk what that means?
10:32Basically, the Razor is powered by the Radar Man 2 radar, which is one of the most popular
10:38radars out in the industry.
10:40That's another product that we build, but the Radar Man 2 is software agile, so we're
10:45able to put in whatever waveforms, threat waveforms, et cetera.
10:49So it's completely programmable, so we can put that out there as a threat emulation system.
10:55So really, when people look at Razor, I want you to think less about being a radar-specific
11:02measurement system and more about it being like an iPhone and really in the fact that it's
11:08got multiple different apps on the system.
11:10So we have an app to do, you know, RCS measurements, an app to do antenna pattern measurements,
11:15an app to do radome characterization, et cetera.
11:18So really kind of pushing the bounds of what you can do with a radar.
11:22All right, Micah.
11:22Well, by this time next year, I'm sure there's going to be all sorts of new apps and updates
11:26that we can talk about, right?
11:28Yeah.
11:28Great.
11:28Sounds good.
11:29Thanks a lot.
11:29Appreciate it.
11:30Really nice talking to you.
11:31Yeah, yeah.
11:31No problem.
11:31All opinions expressed in this segment are solely the opinions of the contributors.
11:39All right, that's going to just about do it for us this week on Weapons and Warfare.
11:42But before we say goodbye, I want to bring in super producer and Air Force veteran Brett
11:47Baker.
11:48Brett, first kind of question I have for you is just initial thoughts after this year's
11:52airspace cyber event.
11:54Well, I think one of the great signs of this event was the numbers were back up.
11:58We went to the AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora in February, and it was sparsely attended
12:05to put it best.
12:07This looked more like an AFA event.
12:10Sure.
12:10Lots of enlisted, lots of officers, lots of civilian contractors, government.
12:14It was packed.
12:15Yeah.
12:16So I think that's definitely a good sign.
12:16The vibe was back, right?
12:17Yeah.
12:18It felt like an event.
12:19One of the kind of cool things that we saw on the day one of the event was Dr. Troy Mink,
12:25the new Secretary of the Air Force, kind of giving his first address to the airmen since
12:29kind of stepping into that role.
12:31But also, General David Alvin kind of giving his last address at an AFA event conceivably
12:37because he's getting ready to retire early.
12:40What did you take away from their keynote addresses?
12:43Well, first of all, for Dr. Mink, he's a guy who's in touch with the Air Force and with
12:47airmen, former KC-135 pilot.
12:50He speaks their language.
12:51It felt like he had his finger on the pulse of his airmen now.
12:57And so I thought that was a very encouraging sign.
13:00And as for General Alvin, he's been one of my favorites.
13:04It's like, since we started covering these shows, he can grab a room.
13:08So I was interested to see, though, that he, there was no really, it wasn't like an emotional
13:13play.
13:13It was about business.
13:14It was all about the business of being a warfighter and what the Air Force needs to
13:19do going forward, which I was very impressed by.
13:22Yeah.
13:22Alvin's kind of, you know, parting words for me was just kind of, you know, we've talked
13:26about being able to move at the speed of relevancy.
13:29He's kind of lighting a fire under everybody's butts.
13:31We need to move fast enough to win.
13:32And when we're moving against, you know, our near peer competition, China, Russia, we have
13:38to move faster than they are, because even if we're ahead, if they're moving faster, they're
13:41going to catch up to us.
13:42So kind of a good message there.
13:44And of course, I mean, we can't walk away from an AFA event without talking about some
13:48of the weapons that stuck out to us, some of the weapon systems.
13:51So what's kind of one thing that stuck out to you?
13:53Well, we profiled it.
13:54The brawler, I think it's pretty cool.
13:56Very adaptable.
13:57I think it's kind of the way you're going to see weapon systems go, especially in the
14:02Indo-Pacific, where they can pre-deploy those things, and it's not going to take a lot to
14:07get them up and going.
14:08And then you can, like, swap out whatever you want in it to fulfill whatever missions that
14:13it is.
14:13So yeah, I hadn't seen that before.
14:15So I thought the brawler was pretty cool.
14:17Yeah, the different applications that they're creating for the APKWS rocket system, which
14:22kind of, we said it in the piece, kind of like the go-to for counter drone, cheap counter
14:27drone right now.
14:28There's going to be different systems and new systems that come up, but being able to, you
14:32know, really take advantage of the Hydra rockets with the new sensors, the brawler definitely
14:36stands out.
14:38For me, the thing that stuck out to most was the Fury, Andruil's CCA entrench.
14:44What am I trying to say?
14:45Entrant.
14:46Entrant into Tronch 1.
14:47There we go.
14:48Yeah, there we go.
14:48It's the first time we saw the Fury on wheels.
14:51Right.
14:52So, out of the wild.
14:53And a very cool display.
14:54Check out the video.
14:55I'm sure we'll have it plastered over the top of us, which is preferable.
14:58Yeah.
14:58But yeah, it was an impressive display, as well as just seeing the full size in person
15:04for the first time.
15:05Absolutely.
15:06All right, Brett.
15:06Thanks for joining us.
15:07Really appreciate it.
15:08That's going to do it for us this week on Weapons and Warfare.
15:11As always, if you like what you saw and or heard, please like and subscribe to our social
15:15media channels and download the Straight Arrow News app today.
15:18It's the best way to stay up to date on all of the latest stories that we have coming your
15:22way.
15:22In the meantime, for senior producer Brett Baker, video editor Brian Spencer, motion artist Dakota
15:28Patio, and photographer Dickon Mager, I'm Ryan Robertson with Straight Arrow News, signing
15:32off.
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