DARPA Picks Bell Textron for New Runway-less Drone X-Plane

July 9, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

A new drone concept featuring folding props has won out for an experimental new aircraft program run by DARPA.

A Bell Textron drone design prevailed over a competing fan-in-wing offering from Boeing’s Aurora Flight Sciences unit for DARPA’s Speed and Runway-Independent Technologies (SPRINT) project, Bell announced July 9. The X-Plane will demonstrate its capabilities for special operations forces, while also offering the characteristics the Air Force seeks for its Agile Combat Employment model of force dispersion.

The downselect begins Phase 2 of the program, which covers completion of the design, fabrication, ground-testing and certification of the drone, which has not yet been given an X-designation by DARPA.

Flight testing could begin as soon as 2027 or 2028, and DARPA’s fiscal year 2026 budget request includes just over $55 million for the SPRINT project.

The goal of the program is to create an X-plane drone “with the ability to cruise at speeds from 400 to 450 knots at relevant altitudes and hover in austere environments from unprepared surfaces,” DARPA says.

Phase 1A of SPRINT began in late 2023 with several competitors, including Northrop Grumman and Piasecki Aircraft Corp. Aurora’s and Bell’s designs were chosen to move forward into Phase 1B in May, 2024. At that time, a first flight was forecast within 36 months. DARPA had also suggested that two contractors might be continued into Phase 2, but has decided to continue with just the Bell concept.

“In Phase 1A and 1B, Bell completed conceptual and preliminary design efforts for the SPRINT X-plane. Phase 2 includes detailed design and build culminating in flight test during Phase 3,” the company said.

The company demonstrated the entire sequence of rotor operation, rotor feathering, rotor folding, and transition to jet thrust on the Holloman Air Force Base High Speed Test Track. Other risk reduction activities included wind tunnel testing at the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University, Kans., the company said.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the director of force design, integration, and wargaming at Air Force Futures, said at an event at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in May that his shop is looking hard at uncrewed aircraft that don’t need a runway to flesh out the Agile Combat Employment model. Under ACE, the Air Force expects to spread its forces across a wide number of bases and austere locations, thereby reducing their vulnerability to precision missile strikes. The concept calls for forces to operate briefly from a location, then likely move to another in order to complicate enemy targeting.

While some portion of the fleet will have to use runways, having aircraft able to take off and land vertically “is something we need to look at” in future iterations of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, he said.

“There’s something to a shorter takeoff length,” Kunkel said. “We’ve got to figure out what that takes, because, generally, when you do a vertical takeof … you decrease the payload, you decrease the range. And so there’s a balance that we need to strike.”

Industry sources said they expect the Air Force to pursue uncrewed vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for logistical support of ACE operating locations, as well as for airbase defense and other missions. However, SPRINT does not have an official connection to the Air Force.

Bell is also developing the V-280/MV-75 Valor next-generation assault rotorcraft for the Army; a tiltrotor which is intended to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk series under the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program. The company is also eyeing the Navy’s Future Vertical Lift program, which it believes could be addressed by a marinized Valor tiltrotor paired with V-247 drones, capable of carrying 1,000 pounds each at more than 300 knots.

The company “has a rich history of breaking barriers and high-speed vertical lift technology development, pioneering innovative VTOL configurations like the X-14, X-22, XV-3 and XV-15 for NASA, the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, and continues to build on the legacy of the Bell X-1,” Bell said in a press release.

DARPA doesn’t develop systems meant to be fielded directly, but helps incubate disruptive technologies for emerging military needs, Rob McHenry, deputy director of the organization, said on a recent Mitchell Institute event.

“DARPA’s job is to be out well ahead of … something we can define to the level of specificity” that can be used to create a requirement, he said.

He also cautioned that not all DARPA programs lead to a military application.

“We are constantly curating our portfolio,” McHenry said. “DARPA is not a place where, once you launched a program, that program is safe to completion. We are constantly reevaluating … what are the maximally disruptive investments that we can make, with the resources that we’re entrusted with.”

A spokesperson for Aurora said that the company “is proud of the advancements we made through SPRINT.”

An artist rendering of Aurora Flight Sciences’ SPRINT drone design.

Aurora “designed a high lift, low drag, fan-in-wing X-plane to enable a transformational combination of aircraft speed and runway independence. Testing conducted during Phase 1 of the SPRINT program validated the feasibility of the design and analytical estimates of aircraft performance.”

While the “specific opportunities” for such an aircraft “are still developing, we do think fan-in-wing technology will be applicable to future high-speed vertical lift platforms and we are looking forward to what’s next,” the spokesperson said.

Air Force Works to Modernize Aging B-52 Simulators

July 9, 2025 | By Matthew Cox

Air Force B-52 program officials are gunning for a budget boost for new simulators that can adequately replicate challenging tasks crew members must perform on real-world bombing missions.

The 2026 base budget request includes $20 million for research and development of the B-52 Mission Employment Trainer, which would upgrade and eventually replace today’s antiquated B-52 Stratofortress crew trainers. The House Appropriations Committee, in its proposed 2026 defense budget, recommended $26.2 million to develop high-fidelity simulators for the B-52H in order to help offset the high cost of live flight training.

Air Force Global Strike Command has been exploring options for Stratofortress simulators since 2022. The B-52 has been in service for 61 years and is expected to remain in service for decades. It remains a critical part of the Air Force’s strategic long-range bombing capability. USAF is investing millions to update the BUFF into a new B-52J configuration, with new engines and new radars. Its goal is to achieve initial operating capability in 2033.

B-52 simulators have not kept up with improvements to the bomber, and today’s 30-year-old simulators at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., are unable to realistically prepare Airmen for key cockpit scenarios before they take their first live flight, said Maj. Linwood Steiner, assistant director of Operation at the 11th Bomb Squadron there.

“At the end of the day, a simulator’s effectiveness as a training tool is directly correlated to the precision with which it mimics the total flying experience,” Steiner told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “In the case of the B-52 [simulator,] its effectiveness as a training tool is very limited when it does not realistically mimic what the actual aircraft is like.”

The 11th Bomb Squadron oversees the nine-month initial qualification course for new B-52 crew members. During the course, students spend about 90 hours in the simulators and an equal amount of hours flying 15 missions in B-52s.

The simulators are still a very effective training tool for weapons system officers and it enables crews to train on procedures for their nuclear mission, Steiner said. It is also a “great place for pilots to be handed situations that are way too dangerous to practice in flight. … You’re able to throw in any emergency procedure that you could ever see. … You can layer emergencies on top of each other, and you can give those emergencies during critical phases of flight, like take off, landing and a low altitude environment.”

But the simulators do not prepare crew for aerial refueling, a critical mission requirement on any long-range flight.

“It’s pretty important for the B-52’s ability to strike targets anywhere in the world within 48 hours,” Steiner said. Refueling is dangerous and it’s a challenge to simulate what it is like to fly “10 feet behind another massive airplane with all of the downdraft associated with aerodynamics. It just becomes a volatile situation.”

Steiner recalled the first time he attempted to refuel in a B-52, a task the former T-38 Talon instructor did not expect to be that challenging.

“I get to the B 52 and everybody’s talking about how hard [aerial refueling] is, and I’m like, just put me behind a tanker,” he recalled. “So I get behind a tanker, and I am flabbergasted at how difficult it is. … I immediately think I’m the worst pilot that’s ever flown.”

The B-52’s wing-mounted spoilers are slow to respond, making it hard to adjust while flying at 400 miles per hour Steiner said. It can take some students 15 flights to become proficient.

In 2022, course officials developed a virtual-reality training device, the Experiential Air Refueling Lightweight Simulator, to familiarize students with refueling the BUFF. Seated in a chair, students don virtual-reality goggles and work with a makeshift yoke and 3-D-printed throttles to practice.

U.S. Air Force Capt. Harrison Daniel, B-52 student pilot, practices operations using the Experiential Air Refueling Lightweight Simulator (EARL)with guidance from Capt. Connor White, a B-52 instructor pilot. U.S. Air Force photo by Gabrielle Terrett

The training device is hardly high-fidelity, but it helps, Steiner said. “So if we have that in a high-fidelity [simulator,] it would be monumental.”

Today’s simulators lack many existing B-52 updates, including communications and navigation equipment and the multifunction cockpit display. These updates were never added to the simulators, diminishing how realistic the training is for modern crews.

Updating simulators cuts down significantly on the number of training flights needed to qualify on an airplane. For example, students “complete their initial qualification [on a B-2 Spirit bomber] in about six flights, whereas on the B-52, it takes 15 flights,” Steiner said. It costs about $88,000 per flight hour to fly the B-52 so each hour saved is significant.

The B-52J will require a whole new simulator when it reaches the fleet in the early 2030s, Steiner said. New engine pylons, new radars, an alldigital backbone and new communications and navigation equipment will each make a difference.

“The changes are so significant that this simulator will not even be able to realistically simulate the actual aircraft at all,” Steiner said.

A spokesman said Air Force Global Strike Command “is currently assessing options to build new, state-of-the-art, simulators; potential courses of action include updating existing simulators or developing new high-fidelity full-motion simulators for pilots and combat systems operators,” according to a a written statement provided by a spokesperson.

Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Simulator System Program Office released requests for information to industry for a medium-fidelity, non-motion simulator in 2024 and for the high-fidelity motion simulator in 2025.

High-fidelity, full-motion simulators provide a cockpit scenario that’s identical to the real aircraft, so pilots and crew will feel like they are flying in a B-52, the spokesman said.

“The realism will be especially good for pilots who can train for takeoff, landing, and air refueling in the simulator at a fraction of the cost of flying the aircraft,” the spokesman said.

Medium-fidelity, non-motion simulators have virtualized buttons and switches on touch screens rather than true instrument panels. They are rapidly reconfigurable with very few hardware components. The cockpit software can be reconfigured from a B-52-H to the J model multiple times a day, the spokesman said.

Global Strike Command would not provide specific details on a timeline, but the spokesman said “our requirements have already been sent out to industry for bid. The next step is to decide which company or companies can build the simulators we need, in the timeframe that we need them, and for a cost that is fair to the taxpayer.”

To Steiner, full motion, high-fidelity simulators are desirable but not a must have. Medium fidelity simulators “would give you that highly customizable, more modern, updatable type of a platform that would give us at least something that perfectly mirrors the [B-52’s] equipment and the switchology and software. … We would much rather have that than a hydraulic stand that gives us motion.”

T-7 Completes Climate Tests as Air Force Pushes to Field New Trainer

July 9, 2025 | By Chris Gordon and David Roza

The T-7 Red Hawk next-generation jet trainer underwent a second round of extreme weather testing as the Air Force presses to get T-7 into production so it can replace the aging T-38 Talon.

“This new round of tests looked to verify the new aircraft’s sustainability in any operational environment,” reported the 96th Test Wing, which conducted the tests at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., in a release.

The T-7 is in developmental flight testing. Previous climate tests in 2024 saw Boeing and Air Force crews perform system operations and engine runs to assess how well the aircraft fared under high and low temperatures ranging from 110 degrees to minus-25 degrees Fahrenheit.

The latest round of weather tests, concluded June 17 at the McKinley Climatic Lab at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. They included subjecting the T-7 to cockpit icing and 190-mph crosswinds, a spokesperson for Eglin Air Force Base said.

Boeing’s lead engineer for the project said the tests made headway that will facilitate future deliveries. The testing approach “allowed for more effective use of our test time and will expedite delivery to the customer,” said David Neely, the interim program manager and chief engineer for T-7, responding to questions from Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We were able to reduce the test time in the chamber from approximately 2.5 months to about 1.75 months.”

The T-7 is needed more than ever. The T-38 is now 60 years old and increasingly unreliable. Aging T-38 airframes are limited in terms of flying hours and have contributed to the Air Force’s pilot shortfall.

A T-7A Red Hawk sits under bright lights used to create heat in the McKinley Climatic Lab June 16, 2025, at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. U.S. Air Force photo by Matt Veasley

“For this phase, the McKinley Climatic Lab set up an icing spray system and crosswind tunnel. The series of ground tests simulate the flight tests through extremely cold and hot temperatures. This experiment tests whether the pilots have sufficient visibility for flight and landing in extreme temperature conditions,” the wing said in a release.

Neely said Boeing and the Air Force also “evaluated water intrusion modifications.”

The McKinley Climatic Lab is a 55,000-square-foot test chamber where Air Force aircraft go to be tested to extremes.

In January, the Air Force delayed the first production contract by a year until fiscal 2026 and said it would first buy four more production-representative T-7 jets for testing.

“Our goal is to ensure the T-7A Red Hawk is fully capable and ready to perform its mission in representative climates,” said Mike Keltos, the Director of Test & Evaluation for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Training Directorate. “These extreme weather tests are a critical step in achieving that objective.”

Space Force Opposes Cut to Commerce’s Space Traffic Management Program

July 9, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The first Trump administration moved to relieve the Space Force of its burden to monitor and warn civilian space operators about potential space traffic hazards. But now, just as the Commerce Department’s new Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) program is nearly ready, the second Trump administration is looking to cancel it.

The Space Force is pushing back.

Commerce zeroed out funding for TracCSS in its fiscal 2026 budget request at a time when the burgeoning number of commercial satellites is making the domain increasingly congested and potentially less safe. The administration argues the private sector should be responsible for tracking satellites and warning operators about potential collisions.

But the Space Force’s Space Operations Command (SpOC) says it will “continue to advocate” for transitioning the civilian space traffic management (STM) mission to TraCSS.

The Space Force has had the de facto mission to manage space traffic for decades, notes Charles Galbreath, a retired Space Force colonel and now senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. If TracCS goes away now, that mission will fall back to the Space Force at a time when the service’s military mission is already growing.

The Space Force and, before that, the Air Force Space Command, began the road to handing off space traffic management to Commerce and TracCS seven years ago. The objective was a system that relieved the Space Force of the civilian STM mission but that also would be better than existing capabilities.

“TracCS has Space Force data but there are also commercial sources, international sources, and sources from satellite operators,” Galbreath said. “That can all be fed into the algorithms, into a shared database, to do the orbit determination. And the more data you have coming in, the more accurate your orbital determination can be.”

Getting the Space Force out of the business of warning individual operators is key. “This allows our squadrons, both operational and sustainment, to focus more fully on our core mission of exploiting opportunities and mitigating vulnerabilities in the national security space terrain,” the SpOC spokesperson said in an email. “This is especially important as the space domain becomes increasingly contested by our adversaries.”

Shutting down TraCSS would save $55 million annually. Space advocates say that’s a small price to pay for space safety, and complain that doing away with the program will increase the chance of collisions in orbit and undermine America’s leadership role in international space.

A broad industry coalition of seven trade groups representing some 450 space companies are appealing to Congress to reverse the decision to cancel TracCSS. The groups include: The Commercial SSA Coalition, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), the Satellite Industry Association, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Commercial Space Federation, the National Security Space Association and the Space Data Association. “The U.S. space industry is very concerned that this move will introduce new risks to our operations and to our businesses,” said Audrey Schaffer, a space industry executive representing the Commercial SSA Coalition, which represents companies that offer space situational awareness services to private sector space operators. It’s notable that even the companies that hope to profit by competing with TraCSS are advocating for it.

SpOC and before it, Air Force Space Command, have long had the job of tracking objects in orbit—including operational and decommissioned satellites, as well as larger orbital debris—and sharing that data for free with commercial space operators. SpOC now tracks 60,000 space objects, according to SpaceTrack.org, the command’s web accessible orbital catalog

The first Trump administration decided in 2018 to move the STM mission to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Department of Commerce and already had a regulatory role regarding satellites. TraCSS, the result of that move, began beta testing last year. It has been scheduled to take over the mission fully next year.

The transition would get the Space Force out of “being the Call Center for Space Safety for the whole world,” Schaeffer said.

Without it, Galbreath noted, the mission falls back on the Space Force as “an unfunded mandate.”

The SpOC spokesperson said the command “remains fully committed to the provision of data for the execution of spaceflight safety operations.”

The command will “continue to advocate for the completion of milestones established in support of Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), which is critical to maintaining a safe, secure, and sustainable space environment,” the spokesperson said. SPD-3 is the 2018 policy directive that moved the mission to NOAA.

NOAA’s justification for zeroing out TraCSS in the budget pinned responsibility on the Biden administration, which it said failed to get the program going in time. “Under the prior administration, DOC was unable to complete a government owned and operated public-facing database and traffic coordination system,” the documents state. “In the [intervening] time, private industry has proven that they have the capability and the business model to provide civil operators with SSA data and STM services.”

A NOAA spokesperson referred questions about the cuts to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB did not respond to a request for comment.

But Richard DalBello, who headed the Office of Space Commerce at NOAA during the Biden administration and oversaw the set-up of TraCSS said that conclusion is incorrect.

“That’s the giant gap in the logic of the administration’s proposal,” he said. “They wish into existence this imaginary solution, which is that the commercial SSA operators will just do this, and that somehow magically they will get paid.”

DalBello said commercial providers may want to do this work, but they are not ready to do so. TracCS, meanwhile, is already in beta testing. He noted that the original 2018 SPD-3 policy directive came without funding, and that it was not until 2023 that funding for TraCSS was made available, a year after he joined the department.

“All things being equal, given that we started the program in 2022 ,the fact that we’re in beta already is pretty damn good,” he said.

It will take time for private services operators to develop offerings and satellite operators to determine which capabilities to pay for.

“How are you picking and choosing among all the companies who do SSA?” Delbello asked. “Some are good at observations in low Earth orbit. Others are good at higher orbits. Some don’t do observation at all, but they do really great software and analysis and prediction.”

Also still undecided: What firms can acquire and resell U.S. data. “There are dozens of global companies that can do SSA,” DelBello said.

Steve Jordan Tomaszewski, vice president for space systems at the Aerospace Industries Association, which also signed the letter to Congress, said civilian space situational awareness needs are very different from military requirements for space domain awareness (SDA). Tomaszewski, a two-decade Air Force veteran, who now serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Reserve, compared it to the difference between civilian air traffic control and an Air Operations Center. It wouldn’t make sense “if the Air Force got called in to operate every single air traffic control tower in our country,” he said.

He added: “Every time that the military has to take on an additional mission that’s outside of [its] scope, it’s a distraction and it’s taking resources away from the core mission.”

TraCSS “frees up the Department of Defense to focus on space warfighting because they’re no longer doing this very basic space safety mission,” Tomaszewski said.

Madelaine Chang, director of policy at the Satellite Industry Association said TraCSS was also modernizing what users could see. TraCSS capabilities impressed beta users, she said, largely because it was built new and applied the latest technology.

“It will be world leading,” Chang predicted—if the system survives the cuts.

KC-46’s Refueling Boom Damaged While Refueling F-22s

July 8, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

A U.S. Air Force KC-46 tanker suffered damage to its boom while refueling F-22 Raptors off the coast of Virginia on July 8, Air & Space Forces Magazine has confirmed, with reported radio communication from the crew indicating the boom “detached.”

The aircraft, a Boeing KC-46 Pegasus from McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., declared an in-flight emergency and eventually diverted to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., a spokesperson for the 22nd Refueling Wing confirmed.

According to air traffic control audio, obtained and published by The War Zone, the crew radioed that “our boom has detached from the aircraft” and that they were running emergency checklists.

Public records and flight tracking data show that the aircraft involved in the incident is a six-year-old KC-46, serial number 17-46033, flying under the callsign FELL81.

The plane began its flight in Kansas and, after the incident, descended below 10,000 feet, and circled the airspace around Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., before flying to Seymour Johnson, according to flight tracking data and Air Force officials.

“A KC-46A Pegasus from McConnell Air Force Base declared an in-flight emergency July 8, while operating off the coast of the eastern United States, refueling F-22s,” John Van Winkle, a spokesperson for the 22nd Air Refueling Wing, confirmed. “The crew had to make the decision to land at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., and has landed safely there. The aircraft will remain there for the time being.”

Van Winkle said Air Force officials were still working to verify details surrounding the mishap and the extent of the damage to the aircraft.

“There was damage to the KC-46’s boom today,” Van Winkle added. “We’re letting the Safety Investigation work to determine the nature and causes of the in-flight emergency, and that will be a complete and methodical process looking at every conceivable aspect of the mission.”

The 1st Fighter Wing said the incident occured while an F-22 was refueling from the KC-46

“The F-22 Raptor returned and landed safely at Langley Air Force Base,” the wing said in a release.

A spokesperson for 1st Fighter Wing later later told Air & Space Forces Magazine it was also investigating the incident.

“Officials will determine the presence of any potential damage and assess its severity via thorough inspection,” they said.

An image provided to Air & Space Forces Magazine by a local aircraft photographer, X user enc_spotter, shows the tanker at Seymour Johnson with part of its boom missing.

The damaged KC-46 at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. Image courtesy of enc_spotter.

The aircraft had flown two missions on July 7 without any reported difficulties, according to flight tracking data.

The KC-46, based on the commercial 767 airframe, has been plagued by issues since its introduction into the fleet, particularly with its refueling system. Boeing resumed deliveries of the aircraft in May after the Air Force halted acceptance of new planes for months due to cracks in the wings—an issue which Boeing and the Air Force say is now fixed.

A long-standing problem has been a so-called “stiff boom,” which prevents the aircraft from refueling the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Contractors and the Air Force are working on a redesigned actuator as a fix.

Another issue involves the aircraft’s Remote Vision System 2.0, an overhaul of the camera system boom operators use to guide the boom to receiving aircraft, which has been delayed until summer 2027. In its 2024 annual report, the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation said the “KC-46A is not meeting many of its suitability metrics.”

This article was updated July 9 with comments from a spokesperson for the 1st Fighter Wing.

Air Force Budget Hints at Shift in Tanker Plans—and More KC-46s

July 8, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force appears to be leaning buying toward more KC-46 refuelers rather than developing a stealthy future tanker, based on budget documents released this week. USAF’s plans prioritize connectivity upgrades and self-protection measures for its aerial refueling fleet.

No final decisions have been announced, but the budget indicates a “Tanker Production Extension” program to follow the KC-46 once production for those aircraft concludes. That effort is the latest in a series over recent years, which have been dubbed variously KC-Y, Bridge Tanker, and KC-135 Recapitalization. One option has always been to simply buy more KC-46s, possibly with upgraded capabilities; meanwhile, airframe builders Airbus and Embraer have each pitched alternatives.

The 2026 budget outlines “plans to use the KC-46A Capability Production Document as the most affordable requirements basis for Tanker Production Extension.” Doing so would give Boeing and its KC-46 a leg up on the competition, as its offering already meets those requirements.

The Tanker Production Extension program also appears under the KC-46 budget line, rather than a separate line item as was the case for KC-Y, which was listed as Air Refueling Capability Modernization.

“Acquisition strategy approval is anticipated in FY 2025, followed by acquisition documentation development, market research, detailed acquisition planning, RFP development, future tanker development, risk and issue assessment, risk and issue mitigation, and other studies and analysis in FY 2026,” the budget documents state.

Officials are asking for $23.8 million for the Tanker Production Extension project. That’s a sizable increase over the $13.6 million they sought for the predecessor effort in fiscal 2025, but also a major shift from the $188 million the previous administration projected it would spend in 2026.

While work on a potential new tanker isn’t ramping up as much, though, the 2026 budget request doubles down on improving the KC-46—which could make it more appealing to continue production.

Specifically, the Air Force is seeking $81.1 million for capability improvements, up from $58.5 million last year, and $40.4 million for research and development, up from $35.1 million.

Among desired enhancements to the KC-46 are upgraded connectivity and communications, which the Air Force and contractor Boeing have both touted. These include:

Block 1 Pegasus Advanced Communications Suite: New Link 16 terminals, global beyond-line-of-sight comms, and jam-resistant satellite voice comms for within line-of-sight.

Block 2 upgrades to enable “compliance with information technology modernization and security requirements [and] integration of the KC-46 on-board information systems with the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architecture.”

Mobility Air Forces Connectivity, an Air Mobility Command initiative to equip its entire fleet with line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight connectivity using a “multi-band, multi-orbit SATCOM terminal and array installation.”

In addition, upgrade funding is still needed to resolve remaining deficiencies with the existing KC-46 design. The Air Force and Boeing continue to revise the aircraft’s Remote Vision System for boom operators, but the budget documents reveal nothing new on that front; they do, however, indicate that “government testing for correction of deficiencies” is expected to continue through at least December 2025.

Work on the KC-46’s Boom Telescope Actuator Redesign is expected to last through the end of fiscal 2027, longer than previously reported. The fix is to adapt the aircraft’s “stiff” boom, which has posed difficulties with refueling the A-10 Thunderbolt II, which has difficulting maintaining sufficient thrust to hold the boom in place. Separately, the Air Force is looking to retire its remaining A-10s in 2026, but the budget documents do not suggest cutting the boom project off if that goes through.

NGAS

Beyond the Tanker Production Extension program, Air Force leaders have spoken of the need for an advanced new tanker, previously called the KC-Z and more recently referred to as the Next-Generation Aerial refueling System, or NGAS.

While the 2026 budget request includes a modest $12.96 million for NGAS, the program appears to be on a slow track, focusing on market research and modeling and simulation to “allow for concept refinement and support to requirements development.”

The idea of building NGAS with some degree of stealth so it can accompany combat aircraft into contested airspace, the new budget documents suggest a changing approach. “Alternatives for more survivable tanking capability could potentially be addressed through more resilient connectivity and on-board and off-board self-protection,” they say. “Acquisition strategies for any or all of these options would be directly related to requirements that will be refined through the FY 2026 activities.”

A Lockheed Martin Skunk Works concept of a stealthy, uncrewed future aerial tanker was shown at a Airlift/Tanker Association meeting.

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall had warned that a stealthy tanker may not be affordable given all of the service’s other priorities, and the new emphasis on resilient connectivity dovetails with planned KC-46 enhancements.

KC-135 Drones

Buried in an infamous 2023 memo from then-AMC commander Gen. Mike Minihan warning of a potential conflict with China was his direction that “KC-135 units will coordinate to provide a conceptual means of air-delivering 100 off-the-shelf size and type UAVs from a single aircraft.”

That concept appears now to be nearing reality, with a KC-135 Drone Delivery Mechanism described as “capable of launching unmanned aerial vehicles from a KC-135 in flight to provide an on-board defensive capability” included in USAF’s fiscal 2026 budget request.

“A prototype integrating a common launch tube with a modified KC-135 aft hatch door to produce and determine the viability of this concept” is cited in the documents. Air Force officials are now “in discussions on best approach to transition the KC-135 Drone Delivery Mechanism to the appropriate [program of record] and implement the capability on the KC-135 fleet,” the document states.

The Pentagon has toyed with the idea of deploying drones from mobility aircraft before—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conceived a program called Gremlins to launch and recover drones from a C-130, and the Air Force has also experimented with palletized cruise missiles that could be launched out of cargo aircraft under project Rapid Dragon. Operational testing for that system is set to conclude this year.

Air Force, Space Force Kick Off Major Pacific Exercises

July 8, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force and Space Force kicked off a busy summer of major exercises across the Pacific on July 8, with thousands of Airmen and Guardians set to participate.

The Department-Level Exercise series includes:

Mobility Guardian, Air Mobility Command’s flagship exercise

Resolute Force Pacific (REFORPAC), led by Pacific Air Forces, which was introduced 17 months ago as part of a “re-optimization” plan to better prepare for potential conflict with China

Resolute Space, a parallel Space Force exercise led by Space Training and Readiness Command

Emerald Warrior, led by Air Force Special Operations Command; and

Bamboo Eagle, an Air Combat Command exercise focused on Agile Combat Employment.

This series will also feed other major exercises, such as Talisman Saber, a joint U.S-Australia-led exercise that includes about a dozen countries and tens of thousands of service members.

All told, the DLE series will test more than 12,000 Air Force and Space Force personnel, more than 350 USAF aircraft, and satellites and ground systems conducting space electromagnetic warfare, space domain awareness, orbital warfare, and navigational warfare, according to a release. All told, that’s a scale that rivals anything the Air Force has done in years.

“Exercising at this speed, scale and tempo is how we prepare for the future fight,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a statement. “We need Airmen to move fast and think outside the box, disrupting the operational status quo. We also build trust and understanding through deliberate planning, operating and learning alongside our partners across the Pacific.”

Added Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman: “By training at this unprecedented scale, we’re sharpening warfighter instincts, strengthening combat credibility and proving our commitment to deliver peace through strength in the face of any challenge.”

Developed over the past two years, beginning shortly after 2023’s upscaled Mobility Guardian, the 2025 excercises were developed by planners meeting throughout multiple conferences, wargames, and tabletop exercises, the work was led by the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center.

U.S. Air Force Airmen assigned to the 35th Fighter Wing install a portable air conditioning unit in a contingency dormitory for Exercise Resolute Force Pacific (REFORPAC) at Misawa Air Base, Japan, July 2, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Brittany Russell

“The scope of these combined exercises is beyond anything I’ve seen in my career,” said Lt. Col. Daniel Weems, a warfare center official at the final planning conference in May. “The concept of executing exercises at this scale, simultaneously, is a massive undertaking and you can sense the energy and excitement of the teams building through the challenges of this requirement.”

Air & Space Forces Magazine will have comprehensive coverage of the DLE series, including exclusive reporting from Mobility Guardian.

AFMC Boss Richardson Retires After 42-Year Career: ‘I Love This Stuff’

July 7, 2025 | By David Roza

Airmen basic rarely go on to become four-star generals, but one who did retired last week after a 42-year career that saw him rise from a lowly slick-sleeve to the head of one of the Air Force’s most important major commands.

Gen. Duke Z. Richardson stepped down July 3 from the helm of Air Force Materiel Command, a group of 89,000 troops and civilians charged with researching, developing, testing, and sustaining the aircraft, weapons, sensors, and other equipment that the Air Force and Space Force rely on.

“I love this stuff,” he said in an Air Force exit interview shortly before retiring. “I get out of bed every day and I get excited about coming in and working with fantastic people at AFMC. And so there’s a sense of loss, you know, just personal, selfish loss, of not being part of this team.”

Richardson started his Air Force career in 1983 as an 18-year-old avionics technician. He originally enlisted in the service as the means to “a steady paycheck and a path toward independence,” according to a press release. But Richardson’s passion for science and engineering helped turn the job into a vocation.

“The Air Force gears don’t turn without AFMC,” he said in the exit interview. “It’s no mistake that there’s a gear in our patch.”

Gen. Duke Z. Richardson commander, Air Force Materiel Command, speaks to junior force members at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Feb. 19, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Michelle Gigante)

In 1989, the maintainer commissioned as a second lieutenant after earning a degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University. He worked a range of materiel-related assignments touching everything from space electronics to F-15 fighter software to presidential airlift to fixed wing special operations aircraft. Throughout it all, his attitude towards hard work remained the same.

“One of the most enduring values I’ve carried with me throughout my entire career—from Airman Basic to MAJCOM commander—is the value of hard work,” Richardson said. “I’m a working general. I learned early on the importance of hard work, humility, and technical excellence.”

That goes back to “integrity first,” one of the Air Force core values.

“I say that to myself all the time,” he said. “It guides my behavior. How you get there is just as important as getting there. I am not willing to achieve an objective if I do it improperly.”

In June 2022, Richardson pinned his fourth star and took command of AFMC shortly before his predecessor, Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., retired. His tenure saw the first flight of the B-21 stealth bomber, the acquisition of the first T-7A trainer jets, the selection of Boeing to build the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, and a shift towards faster digital design and development for Air Force programs.

“This is completely transforming how we’re doing systems engineering,” Richardson said of digital design in 2022.

Air Force Materiel Command faces an uncertain future, as the Office of the Secretary of Defense has ambitious goals to reduce the military’s civilian workforce by 5 to 8 percent. Richardson estimated that 72,000 of his 89,000 employees, about 80 percent, are civilians. While the Air Force gears don’t turn without AFMC, “AFMC gears don’t turn without our civilian workforce,” he said.

Richardson’s successor has not yet been nominated. For now, AFMC deputy commander Lt. Gen. Linda S. Hurry is serving as the formation’s acting commander.

16 Retired 4-Stars Urge Congress to Fund E-7 and More F-35s

July 7, 2025 | By Tobias Naegele

Six former Air Force Chiefs of Staff and nine other retired 4-star generals joined Air & Space Forces Association leadership in calling on Congress to triple the number of F-35A fighters the Air Force buys in fiscal 2026 and to reinstate funding for the E-7 Wedgetail battle management platform that was omitted from the Pentagon’s 2026 budget request.

The wide swath of retired leaders include:

Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, 14th Chief of Staff of the Air Force

Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, 15th Chief of Staff of the Air Force

Gen. Michael E. Ryan, 16th Chief of Staff of the Air Force

Gen. John P. Jumper, 17th Chief of Staff of the Air Force

Gen. T. Michael Moseley, 18th Chief of Staff of the Air Force

Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, 20th Chief of Staff of the Air Force

Gen. John M. Loh, former Vice Chief of Staff and Air Combat Command boss

Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, the first commander of U.S. Northern Command

Gen. Lori J. Robinson, former NORTHCOM commander

Gen. John D.W. Corley, former Vice Chief of Staff and ACC commander

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, former Vice Chief of Staff and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

Gen. Kevin Chilton, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command

Gen. Herbert J. “Hawk” Carlisle, former ACC commander

Gen. Robin Rand, former commander of Air Force Global Strike Command

Gen. Lance W. Lord, former commander of Air Force Space Command

They joined AFA Chairman retired Brig. Gen. Bernie Skoch; AFA President retired Lt. Gen. Burt Field, and retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, Dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute in a letter that challenged the administration’s plan to cancel the E-7 and to build just 24 F-35As.

“During a period of heightened tension throughout the world, we believe such reductions will severely and unnecessarily undermine our service members’ ability to deter, and if necessary, prevail in future conflicts,” they wrote to the Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, as well as the members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees and House and Senate Appropriations defense subcommittees. “As the congressional defense authorization and appropriations committees continue their important work in preparing legislation for Fiscal Year 2026, we respectfully request the Congress provide authorization and funding to procure 75 F-35As and restore E-7 funding in full.”

The House Appropriations Committee and its defense subcommittee have already taken some action toward these ends. Their version of the fiscal 2026 Defense Appropriations bill includes $4.5 billion for 42 F-35As and $500 million to continue development of the E-7.

F-35 Lightning IIs fly in a formation over rural Wisconsin June 23, 2025. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Airman Addie Peterson

But AFA leaders and the former four-stars argue that those steps are insufficient given the ongoing requirement to field 1,763 F-35As to fully equip the Air Force to meet the National Defense Strategy.

Noting that U.S. and Israeli F-35s were “integral to the success of Operation Midnight Hammer” in taking out Iran’s nuclear sites last month and in making that mission possible by crushing Iran’s air defenses to swiftly achieve air superiority over Iran, the letter also emphasized progress made by F-35 maker Lockheed-Martin toward certifying its Tech Refresh 3 upgrade. “That means the hardware and software upgrades are now available enabling even greater improvements in the F-35,” the generals wrote.

The generals also challenged the administration’s decision to terminate the E-7 Wedgetail program and to instead acquire additional E-2 Hawkeye aircraft as a stopgap measure.

“The E-2 is unable to meet the combatant command requirements for theater-wide airborne command and control. That is not the mission for which it is designed,” the wrote. “Additionally, the E-7 can perform missions different from traditional AWACS roles that will be critical to the China contingency.”

The Air Force’s official explanation for canceling the E-7 is that future space-based solutions will eventually be available. But the generals said such systems are still not yet in hand.

“We have high confidence the U.S. Space Force will develop and deploy a space-based air battle management system,” the wrote. “However, the scientific and engineering hurdles to accomplish this goal are daunting and the timeline to success is unclear. Since having a robust tracking and battle management system is fundamental to projecting airpower and winning conflicts, prudence demands we acquire sufficient numbers of E-7s to prevail whenever the next conflict unfolds.”

They applauded “the foresight of the House Appropriations Committee and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in their allocation of funding for the E-7 and respectfully request additional resources be committed so the aircraft can be deployed at the earliest opportunity.”