New commander takes charge of Air Force’s information warfare unit

Lt. Gen. Thomas Hensley on Thursday assumed command of 16th Air Force, the service’s information warfare command, in a ceremony at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.

Hensley, who pinned on his third star prior to the ceremony, was previously the organization’s deputy commander.

The ceremony was presided over by Gen. Ken Wilsbach, commander of Air Combat Command — which 16th Air Force currently sits under — and Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the inaugural commander of 16th Air Force, with several retired military cyber officials from all the services in attendance.

Hensley takes over from Lt. Gen. Kevin B. Kennedy, who came into the job in summer 2022 and is retiring after over 34 years in uniform.

16th Air Force is the service’s integrated information warfare entity, which encompasses cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, electromagnetic spectrum operations and weather, among others. It serves as the service component to U.S. Cyber Command and the cryptologic component to the National Security Agency conducting signals intelligence.

The organization was created in 2019 to integrate the disparate functions of information warfare across the Air Force, one of the first in a series of reorganizations across the U.S. military to address the growing field of IW and combat similar integrated and reorganized factions of adversary militaries such as China and Russia.

The unit has some unique missions, Wilsbach said. “In fact, there’s some of them that are happening as we speak inside of cyberspace, in the air, with reconnaissance aircraft. And certainly we have analysts, intel analysts, that are looking at collections that we’ve been making over the last few days. They’re doing that right now and they do that seven days a week, 24/7.”

Wilsbach noted that under Kennedy’s leadership, the command established an information warfare operations center to synchronize all the activities associated with information warfare for the air component and combatant commanders and launched something called Project Phoenix that gathers subject matter experts across numerous organizations to improve the way intelligence, cyber and reconnaissance products are delivered.

It has played a critical part in recent operations as the main entity responsible for conducting and planning cyber ops across U.S. European Command, helping harden networks against Russian cyber threats in the midst of the war in Ukraine.

Kennedy “led the longest Cyber Command tenured mission packaging campaign cyber response for Ukraine. They’re doing some amazing work. I can’t tell you about any of it — but amazing work and that’s happening 24/7,” Wilsbach said.

Haugh noted that 16th Air Force supports four separate combatant commands and has played a major role in aiding their efforts:

• European Command: defending networks and supporting Eucom in its efforts to aid Ukraine against “the unlawful invasion by Russia.”
• Strategic Command: defending the highest priority networks within the Department of Defense that relate to nuclear systems.
• Space Command: integrating with the newest combatant command as it grew its headquarters
• Cyber Command: aiding in election security efforts over the last few years to prevent foreign interference.

“Each of those roles take synchronization, it takes time and what it also takes is a really great leadership team,” Haugh said.

One of the issues Hensley will navigate is the elevation of AFCYBER, part of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s sweeping changes to the service as part of a reoptimization plan to better organize the department to fight China, which was first announced in February.

As part of that plan, the Air Force intends to elevate AFCYBER, and while details on that effort have been sparse, it is believed it will be taken out from under Air Combat Command.

“We have some changes that are going to happen with AFCYBER and 16th Air Force that are going to occur in the near future,” Wilsbach said. “If you could pick anybody we would pick [Hensley] to lead us through that transition because he has the expertise and he has the experience too. A lot of joint time, a lot of time overseas, a lot of different missions. So right guy, right time.”

Gen. David Allvin, chief of Staff of the Air Force, told reporters in June that the service is being very meticulous in getting this elevation right.

“We want to make sure we measure twice and cut once because there’s different elements of that with respect to where the manpower belongs and … comes from different sources,” he said.