Senate Orders a Ground-Up Review of the Air Operations Center. Kessel Run Is Not In It.

The Senate asked the Air Force to explain the Air Operations Center

On 15 June 2026 the Senate Armed Services Committee filed its report on the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, Senate Report 119-127. Among the Air Force items of special interest is one headed "Review of Air Operations Center processes and performance." In it the committee "directs the Secretary of the Air Force to conduct a comprehensive review of Air Operations Center processes," covering operational planning, intelligence integration, target development, dynamic targeting, battle management, command and control procedures, communications systems, information sharing practices, legal coordination, staffing, training, and coordination with joint, interagency and coalition partners. The briefing is due 25 January 2027.

That is not a spot check on one corner of the enterprise. That is the Air Operations Center from the first planning cycle to the last debrief.

The list is Kessel Run's job description

The Air Force runs 21 Air Operations Centers on the AN/USQ-163 Falconer. Kessel Run is the software factory assigned to modernize it, and Kessel Run's own co-founder dates the organization to 2017. Operational planning. Target development. Dynamic targeting. Battle management. Command and control procedures. Every item on the Senate's list is something Kessel Run has spent nine years telling the Air Force it was rebuilding. The Kessel Run All Domain Operations Suite was going to unify it. Block 20 was going to field it.

Congress is not asking whether the new software is good. It is asking the Air Force to explain, from the ground up, how the Air Operations Center works. You do not commission that review of an enterprise that has been successfully modernized. You commission it when nine years of modernization have left nobody able to say what the thing does.

Kessel Run is not in the item

Not once. Not "Kessel Run." Not KRADOS. Not Falconer. Not "software factory." In an item demanding a full accounting of the Air Force's flagship command and control enterprise, the word "software" does not appear at all.

That is an observation about a document, not a claim about anyone's intent. It is still a hell of an observation. The committee found room for legal coordination. It found room for information sharing practices. It did not find room for the organization that has owned this weapon system's software for nine years. Kessel Run spent nine years building a brand, and the Senate wrote the definitive question about Kessel Run's mission without needing the word "software" to frame it.

The committee wants a risk assessment before anyone automates the debrief

The item does not stop at commissioning an explanation. It writes down a fear. The committee is concerned about "proposals to reduce, replace, or eliminate squadron intelligence debriefs" and Mission Reports, and the briefing has to include "an assessment of the operational impacts, risks, and potential benefits associated with any effort" to "reduce, replace, automate, or eliminate MISREPs." The report names no proponent, so neither will we.

Note what the Senate has now put in writing anyway. Before anyone automates away the aircrew who sit down after a sortie and write out what actually happened, it wants the risks in a briefing. For nine years the entire pitch of Air Force software modernization has been that the machine takes the manual work off the operator. The obvious read is that Congress has started to suspect the manual work was the capability.

None of it is law, and it is still the most concrete thing on the calendar

Committee report language is an instruction, not a statute, and this one rides a bill that failed a cloture vote 50 to 46 on 14 July. No fiscal 2027 authorization has been enacted. Meanwhile Kessel Run's market research for the replacement Air Operations Center, now rebranded "Revolutionary," closes tomorrow. Industry's answers are due Wednesday. The question is due in January.

Kessel Run was built in 2017 to make the Air Operations Center work. Nine years and 21 Air Operations Centers later, the Senate has ordered a review to find out whether it does, and Kessel Run is not in it.

Sources

The jokes are ours. These are not.

Disclaimer: Satire. We know the citations make it look like journalism. The sources are real, the sneering is ours, and any resemblance to a fair and balanced assessment is purely coincidental.