If America Wants Airpower, It Needs to Invest in Its Air Force 

If America Wants Airpower, It Needs to Invest in Its Air Force 

July 2, 2025 | By Douglas A. Birkey

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2026 defense budget, submitted to Congress last week, accelerates the downsizing of the U.S. Air Force. It proposes divesting 340 aircraft, while only acquiring 76. These cuts risk the Air Force’s ability to prevail.  

“Peace through strength” has been a sounding cry for the Trump administration, as it was in the Reagan era 40 years ago, but rhetoric alone cannot enhance military readiness or restore deterrence overseas. That takes resources—investments in planes, weapons, and people. If the President wants the security options afforded by airpower, then he needs to invest in it. Congress must also work to rebuild America’s Air Force.    

The U.S. Air Force is unique in its scale and scope. Airmen ensure air superiority, provide global strike and rapid global mobility, generate intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and enable command and control. They are responsible for two-thirds of America’s three-leg nuclear deterrence mission.  

While the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army each possess their own elements of airpower, only the Air Force has the volume, range, and heft to meet combatant commander requirements at scale. Navy, Marine Corps, and Army aviation focus primarily on supporting their own service-centric organic missions, like fleet defense, protecting the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, and supporting Army unit movements; only the Air Force focuses all its capabilities on the joint force mission.  

Here’s why that’s so important: When the Air Force takes a hit in the budget wars, the entirety of joint force operations feels the impact.  

When President Trump ordered the June 22 strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, U.S. Air Force’s B-2s were the only aircraft in the world with the range, payload capacity, and stealth to execute the mission. None of the other U.S. military services or our allies could drop bombs of that size and capability, nor inflict the same kind of damage with something else. Few have the supporting elements that made it possible—large numbers of aerial refueling tankers, air battle managers, or the radar-evading advanced stealth fighters required to escort the stealthy B-2s to their targets.   

Despite the spectacular display over Iran,  America’s Air Force is no longer what it once was. Today, it is too old, too small, and too under-resourced to ensure the ready forces necessary to deter aggressors around the world and guarantee victory in a fight if circumstances warrant. In the two decades following the 9/11 attacks, the Army received $1.3 trillion and the Navy $900 billion more than the Air Force. The result is the Air Force is out of balance—with too many aircraft aging out of service, and too few modern weapons, planes, and parts.  

The Air Force originally planned to acquire 132 B-2s, but post-Cold War budget cuts ended the program after only 21 were built. Just 19 remain in the active inventory today. In the 2000s, the F-22 fleet, once planned to include 750 planes, was cut short at 187. Today, F-35 acquisition continues to lag years behind planned numbers. Time and again, recapitalization plans have been delayed for other aircraft. The E-3 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS were supposed to be replaced in the early 2000s. No airborne JSTARS replacement was ever developed and the E-3 replacement, the E-7, will be cancelled in 2026 if the President’s budget plan is adopted.  

Across the Air Force fleet, modernization plans have been cut, curtailed, or delayed repeatedly over the past three decades. Risks have compounded. Previous leaders simply extended the lives of older aircraft to fill the gap, but eventually, aircraft grow too old and frail to keep flying. Much of today’s fleet is reaching that point and the Air Force may soon be unable to perform critical missions.   

The 2020s were supposed to be the decade when the Air Force finally modernized. The B-21 bomber, F-35, F-15EX, and F-47 fighters, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), T-7 trainer, Sentinel ICBM, E-7, EA-37B electronic warfare jet, KC-46 tanker, and more were all positioned to reset the force. They still can, but it requires more money.  

The U.S. Air Force had planned to follow the Royal Australian Air Force and the UK’s Royal Air Force, among other allies and partners, to acquire the E-7 Wedgetail. The fiscal 2026 budget submitted to Congress would end the program in favor of future space-based capabilities. Air Force photo by Richard Gonzales

Under this newest defense budget, the Trump Administration’s fiscal 2026 defense request fails to make the necessary investments to ensure a ready, capable Air Force at scale.  Thought service leaders have long maintained that the Air Force needs to acquire at least 72 new fighters per year to ensure air superiority in combat, this year’s budget funds a mere 45—the fewest in years. At the same time, the budget seeks to divest all162 remaining A-10 aircraft before replacements arrive. Airmen will seek employment elsewhere, at a time when we badly need their services to meet burgeoning mission demand.  

The budget cancels the E-7 in favor of space-based capabilities that do not yet exist in operational form, and will probably will not appear until the mid-2030s. We’ve seen this before: Seven years after the Air Force cancelled the E-8 JSTARS in 2018, its space-based successor solution has yet to emerge. These gaps are risk decimating the air battle manager career field. 

Training is another problem area. The budget retires 35 T-1s, but only buys 14 T-7s. This is a complex issue given delays in the T-7 program, but the net effect is a downsizing of the training inventory at a time when the service wrestles with the long-standing pilot training shortfall and the advanced age of the T-38.Likewise, the budget plan calls for cutting 14 C-130s while buying zero replacements. And this comes at a time when we know Pacific operations demand more airlift, not less.  

The impact of these cuts is clear. Fighter bases now lack aircraft, most notably Kadena Air Base, Japan—our primary air base in the Pacific. Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma has seen its inventory of E-3s cut in half. At Robins Air Force Base, Ga., where the E-8 JSTARS made its last flight in 2023, aircrews wait for space-based battle management capabilities to come online. They have zero operational capability at their home station.  

One B-2 bomber—which was part of the decoy force launched as part of the Iran strike—is marooned in Hawaii. It made an emergency landing due to a mechanical issue. Thirty-year-old aircraft break and Airmen are growing fed up, fueling a chronic pilot shortfall.  

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin has repeatedly warned that the nation “needs more Air Force.” Congress should heed his warning.   

America faces severe threats around the globe. As the famous movie “The Right Stuff declares: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers. Whoever gets the funding gets the technology. Whoever gets the technology stays on top.”  A robust Air Force is the key to staying on top. Congress must override the Pentagon’s dangerous cuts and fund the Air Force America needs to fly, fight and win.  

‘What ACE Is All About’: Dispersion Protects Airmen, Planes During Iran Attack

‘What ACE Is All About’: Dispersion Protects Airmen, Planes During Iran Attack

July 2, 2025 | By Matthew Cox

As the Air Force readied for its June 21-22 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the service was also putting its Agile Combat Employment strategy into action. Satellite imagery showed combat aircraft emptying Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in preparation for a possible Iranian retaliatory attack.

When that attack came June 23, a small number of U.S. and Qatari air base defenders remained on base. They repelled the attack, firing “round after round” from Patriot missile launchers, intercepting 13 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said during a June 26 Pentagon briefing. There were no casualties or major damages.

“Most folks had moved off the base to extend the security perimeter out away of what we assessed might be a target zone,” Caine said.

Iran gave advance warning of the attack, President Donald Trump said, and the massive installation is an obvious target because of its strategic importance and close proximity to Iran. But some defense experts maintain that dispersing forces from Al Udeid was a successful use of Agile Combat Employment that may be more necessary in the future as threats from missiles, offensive drones, and other aerial weapons continue to threaten large, fixed air bases.

“The name of the game is complicating the targeting solution for your adversary,” Ravi Chaudhary, former Air Force Assistant Secretary for Installations, Environment and Energy told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The priority for any response now … is getting the jets airborne and getting them out of dodge or into the fight fast–that’s what Agile Combat Employment is all about.” 

Tom Karako, director of the Center of Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project, said that bases in the Middle East were under increased threat even before the U.S. attacked Iranian nuclear facilities. The advancement of long-range attack drones like those used by Iran in April 2024 to attack Israel and those Ukraine launched June 1 to attack Russian bomber bases in Operation Spiderweb have provided adversaries with more options.

“What’s really changed is the nature of the threat environment … and the supply of lots and lots of various forms of aerial attack,” Karako said. The practice of dispersing aircraft is not new, but it “may need to be more frequent than it has been over the last 30 years … because of the nature of the threat,” he added.

Still, Timothy Walton, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said the Air Force should not rely too heavily on dispersing its forces and instead invest in hardened shelters to protect its stealth fighter and bomber aircraft from aerial attacks. Walton co-authored a January report that preceded a similar RAND Corp. report in early June, both of which critiqued the Air Force for deferring hundreds of millions of dollars for passive defenses such as hardened shelters to fund high-priority acquisition programs.

“Agile Combat employment is becoming ingrained into the Air Force’s thinking of how to operate in future contested environments, and the ability to disperse your aircraft is a highly valuable approach that can reduce the risk of being targeted, but I will say that the Air Force’s current dispersion-heavy, hardening-light approach is likely inadequate,” Walton said.

U.S. aircraft will need to disperse to other airfields with hardened shelters because “in a large-scale war, many of those airfields would also be attacked,” he said. Additionally, near-peer adversaries such as China have space-based targeting systems that can “detect where these aircraft disperse to and attack them in detail.”

An Air Force spokesman told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Airmen will participate in a service-wide exercise this summer that will force them to employ ACE tactics “to increase survivability and ensure air superiority for the joint force.”

Chaudhary acknowledged that there has been a lot of discussion on why the Air Force isn’t building more hardened shelters. He pointed out that TAB-VEE-style hardened shelters “are expensive to build and upkeep, upwards of $300 million for one facility” that’s designed to protect a single aircraft. 

Most TAB-VEE shelters were largely built during the Cold War between the 1960s and the early 1980s. Walton said there are more modern alternatives available that cost far less. He pointed to a 2017 project at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea that built 10 single-aircraft hardened shelters at a cost of approximately $30 million.

air force base resilient basing
A ribbon cutting ceremony was held to celebrate the construction of new hardened aircraft shelters on Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea, July 31, 2020. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Will Bracy

But Chaudhary said survivability isn’t always about reinforced concrete.

“In the information age, protecting installations goes way beyond thicker concrete,” he said. “There are a full range of things that need to be done to ensure installations are ready and survivable.” 

Air bases need other types of passive defenses such as redundant power and fuel sources as well as cyber hardening, Chaudhary said, agreeing that the Air Force needs to invest consistently in passive defense measures. 

“You don’t even need a missile; a carefully-placed cyber attack can shut down all of our capabilities and render us unable to even get our jets out of town,” he said.

Recent attacks by Israel and the U.S. have left Iran and proxy forces such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon “significantly degraded,” but they still remain a threat in the future, Central Command Deputy Commander Vice Adm. Brad Cooper recently told Congress.

Karako said the threat to U.S. installations goes beyond the Gulf region.

“It’s not just the Middle East; it’s the North American region we have to worry about too,” he said. “I would worry about an Iranian cell in the United States that has access to [drones] and decides they want to go after a base with bombers parked outside.”

Chaudhary said he is confident the U.S. military can “continue to execute Agile Combat Employment tactics and attain all of our strategic objectives” but it must remain adaptable as the threats to air bases evolve.

“The challenges are real, and the threat is real,” he said. “Our installations are no longer a sanctuary.”

Grynkewich Takes Over EUCOM and Warns: ‘Our Adversaries Are Aligning’

Grynkewich Takes Over EUCOM and Warns: ‘Our Adversaries Are Aligning’

July 1, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

Air Force Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich assumed command of U.S. European Command on July 1, taking over the key assignment as the U.S. and its allies contend with a resurgent Russia and a grinding war in Ukraine.

Grynkewich, who was confirmed by the Senate just a few days prior, succeeded Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli and will lead more than 80,000 U.S. troops in Europe.

He will also become Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO in a ceremony in the coming days, a role in which he will help oversee the armed forces of the alliance’s 32 countries on the continent.

“A protracted war rages in Europe for the first time in decades, and our operations in the Mediterranean are helping to contain conflict in the Middle East,” Grynkewich said in his remarks at the command’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. “More broadly, our adversaries are aligning, working together more than ever before as they seek to dominate their regions and even the globe. Thus, the good work done here at this headquarters and across the command is more important than ever.”

Grynkewich is taking on his new responsibilities as NATO nations have vowed to boost defense spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic product in a summit meeting last week.

The alliance also faces challenges. Russia is slowing graining ground in Ukraine and is moving to expand its military. The U.S. and European industrial bases have been under pressure to keep pace with weapons orders. And while President Donald Trump and the Pentagon have announced no major U.S. force posture changes, European nations have worried about the durability of the U.S. commitment.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who attended the change of command, knows Grynkewich well, since he served under the chairman on the Joint Staff as the Director for Operations (J-3)

“He is frosty under pressure. He is prepared for this job,” Caine said of Grynkewich. 

Caine compared the challenges faced by Grynkewich to those confronting the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who held the position in the 1950s in the aftermath of World War II.

“Eisenhower’s expectations in 1950 were clear: Europe’s got to take ownership of its own defense, and they do that today as we’re called to a similar moment,” Caine said. “Global risk is on the rise. The world can shift in a matter of hours, and that’s why we prepare.”

“The last two weeks have shown the world that we’re the most capable, most integrated fighting force, and we’ve got more global reach than and unmatched capabilities than any other military on the planet,” Caine continued, a reference to the B-2 operation to bomb Iranian nuclear sites which was supported by tankers and fighters assigned to Europe, as well as additional forces. “Our strength is also in our alliances.”

Cavoli played a key role in U.S. support for Ukraine, often conferring with his counterparts in Kyiv. He also led the NATO alliance as it developed new regional military plans in response to Russia’s aggression.

Grynkewich last served in Europe from 2010 to 2012, when he held a staff job at EUCOM as Chief of the Plans Division (J-35), rising to the rank of colonel.

A career F-16 and F-22 pilot, Grynkewich has spent the last year as J-3, considered a pivotal three-star position and a potential launching pad for high-level command. Before his latest stint at the Pentagon, he served as the head of Air Forces Central and the Combined Forces Air Component Commander (CFACC), the commander of allied air efforts in the Middle East, from 2022-2024. 

“Ever since we left in 2012, we’ve been fighting with the Air Force Personnel System to get back to Europe,” Grynkewich quipped in his speech. He noted that his previous tour in Europe came prior to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, and then Moscow’s full-scale war on Kyiv launched in February 2022, which has led to a far different security landscape.

“In those days, we were mostly worried about Israel [which was in EUCOM at the time] at this headquarters,” Grynkewich said. “We were in the midst of another attempt at a resetting of relations with Russia. China never crossed our minds. And we would never have contemplated the role for Iranian weapons or North Korean soldiers on the European continent. Today, we have to think about all of these challenges and more.”

First Missile Warning Satellite Launch to MEO Slips, But More to Come

First Missile Warning Satellite Launch to MEO Slips, But More to Come

July 1, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force’s first planned satellite launch to begin a new missile warning constellation in medium-Earth orbit has slipped from late 2026 to spring 2027 as a key component remains unproven. But the service is making progress and moving forward with plans for new batches of satellites, the Guardian in charge of the effort said July 1. 

Just last month, Space System Command’s space sensing directorate announced it had awarded a contract to BAE Systems for 10 satellites as part of what it’s calling “Epoch 2” for its Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking MEO program. During a webcast with AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Brig. Gen. (Select) Robert W. Davis said the Space Force plans to issue another contract for more Epoch 2 satellites this fall.

Davis noted that the second contract could cover two more “planes” of satellites. Budget documents indicate that could mean 10 to 12 more satellites. 

“We’re seeing a huge response from the industrial base every time there’s a call for proposals and the source selection for a tranche or an epoch,” Davis said. “We’re seeing that response coming from industrial base. That’s very exciting, as we are able to pull in nontraditional players in this area that drives innovation.” 

In many ways, the Resilient MW/MT MEO program is following in the footsteps of the Space Development Agency’s own missile tracking architecture in low-Earth orbit, Davis noted. Like SDA, his team is taking an incremental approach, regularly competing and awarding multiple new contracts instead of consolidating them into one big deal. By doing so, they hope to spread out their missile warning capability across many different satellites, incorporate new technologies faster, and encourage more competition. 

Yet just as SDA has run into delays executing its breakneck timelines, SSC has also encountered hiccups.

Davis acknowledged supply chain issues and technical challenges have cropped up as the service tries to institute the “right testing, the right rigor on the ground, so once we get to orbit, we have a functional system.”

As a result, Epoch 1’s first launch, originally scheduled for the end of fiscal 2026, has now been pushed back to sometime in the first half of the 2027 calendar year. 

Another similar issue facing both SDA and SSC involves the laser optical crosslinks that will pass data between satellites, a much faster and more secure process than radio frequency signals offer. 

SDA has established some laser crosslinks in low-Earth orbit with its demonstration “Tranche 0” satellites, but the technology is still relatively new. The watchdog Government Accountability Office argued earlier this year that the agency was investing too heavily in the option without being certain it will work.

Davis called the laser crosslinks the “linchpin” of the new proliferated constellations in low- and medium-Earth orbit, but also said it is the potential risk to the MEO program the Space Force is watching the closest.

To address that risk, “we’re really leaning into lessons learned at Tranche 0 and investing more in our ground architecture to be able to do more testing and risk mitigation of that crosslink technology,” Davis said. That way, the service will be more prepared to respond to any issues that pop up on orbit.

There are differences between the work underway at SDA and SSC. Unlike SDA, which is trying to establish crosslinks between satellites built by different vendors, Davis’ team at the space sensing directorate “made the choice not to push the envelope on the crosslinks,” he said. As a result, Epochs 1 and 2 will have crosslinks connecting satellites from the same vendor, but not between systems built by different companies.

The optical crosslinks at medium-Earth orbit will also require different standards than those at low-Earth orbit, given the distances and altitudes involved. Davis said his team is working with SDA and industry on those baseline requirements.

“We’re in a little bit of a horse race to see which one’s going to mature in the industrial base, which one’s going to be the best to put on contract for Epoch 3,” he said. 

Despite the challenges, Davis argued that new missile warning capabilities in low- and medium-Earth orbits are necessary to complement the Pentagon’s existing legacy systems in geosynchronous orbit that have proven their worth against real-world threats in recent years. 

“We have a very robust missile warning architecture today,” Davis said. “It has shown that the nation can defend itself, can help our allies defend themselves. That’s absolutely working today.”

“What we don’t have,” he continued, “is architecture that’s responsive to the emerging threats. And so this first set of tranches and epochs are hyper-focused, pun intended, on those hypersonic targets and other dim targets that are out there that are really more challenging to the current architecture.” 

Perhaps the most important part of that architecture, Davis said, is the ground segment that will ingest huge amounts of data from the many new sensors on satellites going into orbit. For the MEO constellation, Davis’ team is working on a system called FORGE that will also be used for missile warning satellites in geosynchronous and polar orbits. 

As with the satellites, Davis said his team is taking an incremental approach to the ground system that asks smaller companies to develop “chunks” of software at a time. The ground segment is poised to receive around $350 million in 2026. 

Senate Passes Reconciliation Bill with Billions for Air Force and Space Force

Senate Passes Reconciliation Bill with Billions for Air Force and Space Force

July 1, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The Senate passed Republicans’ sweeping tax-and-spending package July 1 in a 51-50 vote, the culmination of a 27-hour marathon legislative session. The package—often called the reconciliation bill—includes a $150 billion package of defense funds that accounts for a significant portion of the money the Air Force and Space Force want for their top priorities next year.

The bill now returns to the House of Representatives for further consideration.

“The Senate-passed reconciliation bill is an investment in the future of the United States,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said on social media after the vote. “Through this legislation, the Senate secured a down payment on a generational upgrade for our nation’s defense capabilities.”

The bill is essentially must-pass legislation for the Department of the Air Force, which stands to lose tens of billions of dollars from its annual budget if the measure fails to become law. Nearly $39 billion—or 15.5 percent—of the $250 billion the Air Force and Space Force seek in 2026 would come from the reconciliation bill.

While the defense provisions in the bill aren’t controversial, their fate is tied to the outcome of the more divisive overall package, which includes cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and trillions of dollars for tax breaks, immigration enforcement, and more.

If the legislation isn’t enacted, the services would face a budget cut of almost 1 percent compared to the previous year. That possibility would be a “massive blow to our plan,” Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink told the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee last week.

“It’s highly risky, because there is no guarantee that there’ll be another reconciliation bill,” Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The fact that the Air Force and Space Force did not do well in their base budgets is a troubling sign.”

The Space Force would be hit particularly hard. More than one-third of its $40 billion spending proposal would be funded through the reconciliation bill, putting the service in a precarious position as it watches the legislation’s progress.

Nearly half of the Space Force’s $29 billion research, development, test, and evaluation request depends on the reconciliation bill—a massive gamble for the service as it tries to take on more missions in its sixth year. Some of that is comprised of the Trump administration’s attempt to secure a $25 billion “down payment” for its Golden Dome missile defense system that would heavily rely on Space Force assets to protect the U.S. from attack.

The Space Force’s spending plan indicates it “lost big” to the other services as Pentagon leaders crafted the 2026 base budget request, Harrison said, despite the military’s growing reliance on space for directing precision-guided weapons, surveillance, and communications.

“That money is going to go away,” he said of the boost through reconciliation. “What are they left with?”

Twelve percent of next year’s Air Force budget relies on reconciliation dollars as well. While the money can give programs like the B-21 stealth bomber a temporary bump, Harrison believes it won’t accomplish much in the long run.

Reconciliation is one piece of the Trump administration’s $1 trillion defense spending request for 2026, which it has split between the one-time megabill and the regular annual appropriations process in the hope of making it more likely to succeed.

“I don’t fully understand all of the mechanisms, but I think the first principle is … a sustained topline to be able to continue our modernization and maintain readiness is going to be key, however that happens,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said of the two-track approach at the June 26 Senate defense appropriations hearing.

Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top officer, added that the service is still sorting through how the mandatory spending included in the reconciliation bill will affect its overall budget.

If the services get all the money they’ve asked for across both avenues, the Air Force would sit $25.5 billion, or 14 percent, higher than in 2025. The Space Force would receive $11.3 billion, or 40 percent, more than in the previous year.

The “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” as the reconciliation package is called, offers billions of dollars for defense initiatives such as speeding production of new aircraft, bolstering nuclear missile development, and supporting military families. The Senate bill recently added $600 million to develop and acquire unspecified long-range strike aircraft for the Air Force, as well as $1 billion for the X-37B spaceplane and $3.7 billion to develop and defend military satellites, among other updates.

The legislation uses a maneuver known as budget reconciliation that allows the Senate’s Republican majority to pass the package of President Trump’s policy priorities without Democratic votes.

The bill earned the go-ahead around noon July 1, more than a full day after a long-running series of votes on amendments—called a “vote-a-rama”—kicked off shortly after 9 a.m. June 30. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Susan Collins (Maine) sided with Democrats in voting against the bill, forcing GOP leadership to assuage Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s concerns in exchange for a yes vote. Vice President J.D. Vance then cast the tiebreaking vote.

GOP leaders have said they hope to pass the bill by July 4, a self-imposed deadline.

Among the amendments offered, Republicans blocked a motion from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to prohibit the bill’s defense funding from being used to retrofit the former Qatari royal jetliner to serve as a temporary Air Force One. Another measure from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), which would limit the ability of federal agencies to fire more than 1 percent of their employees if any military veterans lose their jobs as a result, failed in a party-line vote.

Wicker, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, pushed back on Blumenthal’s amendment, noting that the bill doesn’t offer money for presidential aircraft. Defense Department nominees vetted by the committee have pledged to use the reconciliation funds as directed, he added, making an amendment that would stop funds from being shifted to an interim Air Force One obsolete.

An amendment from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), to prohibit the use of Defense Production Act funds without congressional approval, failed 42-58. The Defense Production Act allows the president to mobilize domestic industries in support of national defense, including boosting production capacity at American factories, forcing companies to prioritize federal contracts, and entering into new public-private partnerships.

The law was a key tool in the federal battle to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, invoked to increase production of N95 masks and COVID-19 vaccines.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act faces headwinds as it returns to the House, where lawmakers will have to hash out concerns about the Senate’s changes to the cap on state and local tax deductions and Medicaid reform, among others. The bill narrowly escaped defeat in the House with a 215-214 vote in May.

“This has been an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution,” Murkowski said in a statement. “My sincere hope is that this is not the final product. This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the President’s desk. We need to work together to get this right.”

Space Force Boosting an Ecosystem of GPS Alternatives in Low-Earth Orbit

Space Force Boosting an Ecosystem of GPS Alternatives in Low-Earth Orbit

July 1, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.  

A half-dozen companies, including two with research contracts from Space Force or Air Force tech incubators, are currently planning low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellations of hundreds of small satellites that will offer position, navigation, and timing services to augment or back up GPS. 

The military has long been concerned about its reliance on GPS, but over the past few years civilian users have experienced increasingly severe GPS interference around conflict zones in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. 

In particular, civil aviation has been hard hit, said Lisa Dyer of the GPS Innovation Alliance, a trade association that represents GPS receiver manufacturers, satellite operators, and user groups like boaters, surveyors, and autonomous vehicle developers.  

GPS jamming, used to stop drone attacks and smart bomb targeting, creates “unnecessary extra burdens on our air traffic controllers and flight crews, and it’s increasing risks to the safety of the flight crews and the passengers,” Dyer told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

PNT signals from low-Earth orbit are harder to jam, experts say, because they are broadcast from much closer to the earth’s surface. New cryptographic techniques make the signals hard to impersonate with bogus data, a problem known as spoofing. And two of the new constellations also plan to use a completely different frequency band for their signals, which will also make jamming more difficult and more complicated.    

LEO satellites orbit between 100 and 1,200 miles above the surface of the Earth. GPS and its other major PNT constellations like China’s BeiDu, Russia’s GLONASS, and Europe’s Galileo are all in medium-Earth orbit, 11,000-15,000 miles above the surface. 

“There are some advantages to medium-Earth orbit and some advantages to low-Earth orbit,” said Dyer. 

The main advantage of MEO, she explained, is the smaller number of satellites required. From a higher orbit, a satellite is visible over a greater proportion of the earth’s surface. In MEO, 24 satellites is enough to offer near-global coverage. The current GPS constellation has 31 satellites in orbit, which means there’s some redundancy, Dyer said.  

The main advantage of LEO is the signal can be orders of magnitude stronger when it arrives at the receiver, making it easier to receive and harder to jam, said Patrick Shannon, co-founder and chief executive officer of TrustPoint, a LEO PNT startup that launched its third satellite last month. 

With several hundred satellites in a large LEO constellation, users can also see more satellites in the sky at one time, and therefore receive more triangulating signals, making LEO PNT potentially more accurate than MEO-based systems. 

TrustPoint staffers at the company HQ in Herndon, Va., watch the launch June 23, 2025 of Time Flies, their third LEO PNT satellite, from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Courtesy TrustPoint

The new GPS alternatives use cryptographic authentication, which means the user can be sure the data they’re getting is genuine and not a fraudulent replacement, or “spoofed” signal, designed to mislead. The new generation PNT systems also use encryption, which scrambles the signal so only those with the correct cryptographic key loaded in their receiver can use it. As well as guarding against spoofing, this makes subscription-only services easy to offer. 

Both the Air Force and Space Force technology incubators—along with Department of Defense-wide efforts like the Defense Innovation Unit—have sought to seed commercial companies working in this space, with the aim of easing the emergence of a new ecosystem of LEO PNT providers that can provide a secure alternative to GPS.  

Last year, TrustPoint was awarded three phase II research contracts from the Department of the Air Force: a Small business Technology Transfer (STTR) award of $1.6 million from AFWERX, the Air Force’s technology incubator; and two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards worth a total of $3.8 million from SpaceWERX, the Space Force equivalent. The company is commercially focused, said Shannon, but is happy to be part of the Space Force’s Alt-PNT cadre of startups that are developing alternatives to GPS for military use, as well. 

The awards helped TrustPoint develop technology to broadcast and receive PNT signals in C-Band, Shannon said, with a frequency just over five gigahertz. That’s much higher than the one to two gigahertz L-Band frequencies used by GPS and its state-backed alternatives.  

The higher frequency C-Band signals are more subject to degradation during adverse weather and when traveling through buildings than L-Band, but make up for that by being transmitted from satellites over 30 times closer to the Earth, Shannon said. And the faster fall off in signal power over distance for the higher frequency C-Band signal, called path loss, complicates jamming efforts as well. 

“The distance a signal travels is a function of the power behind it,” said Shannon, but a C-Band jammer loses power more quickly. An L-Band broadcast will travel three times as far as a similarly powered signal in C-Band, meaning someone trying to jam C-Band service will need many more jammers or much more powerful ones. They’ll also need new equipment, since existing GPS jammers are built to target L-Band broadcasts. 

“The infrastructure required and the physical complexity of denying C-Band makes it much more difficult and costly,” concluded Shannon. 

The satellites in TrustPoint’s constellation will be so-called microsats, only about the size of a four-slice toaster. The company aims to have about 350 of them in orbit by the end of the decade, but will be able to start offering a service with a fraction of that number in 2027, Shannon said. 

He also said that the small size of the satellites and advanced manufacturing technologies would allow the firm to put the entire constellation up for “$100 million, give or take, not billions.” 

The global market for assured, or hard-to-jam, PNT is predicted to grow almost 25 percent a year from $400 million a year in 2022, to $3.5 billion a year in 2032, according to one forecast.  

Shannon acknowledged that TrustPoint was already facing competition. “This is a massive problem,” he said of GPS jamming and spoofing. “Many industries, many nations, are experiencing these issues, and everyone’s looking for a solution. And that, of course, is an economic opportunity that a lot of companies are looking at.” 

Those competitors include other members of the Space Force’s altPNT cadre, like Xona, a California-based startup which launched its first production satellite last month and recently announced a series B funding round and other capital backing to the tune of $92 million.   

Xona aims for a constellation of 250-300 satellites and will broadcast signals in both L-Band and C-Band, according to its website. The company says it is partnering with receiver manufacturers to produce devices that can receive both GPS L-Band and LEO PNT C-Band signals. 

Xona, TrustPoint, and other LEO PNT startups will have to contend with an incumbent; Iridium, the first-ever LEO constellation, has been providing an L-Band PNT service for eight years, initially in partnership with Satelles, until Iridium acquired them last year. The partnership, said Satelles founder and now Iridium vice president of PNT Michael O’Connor, began as an ahead-of-its-time venture founded in the early years of the last decade, when concerns were only just starting to emerge about the fragility of GPS and the increasing dependence of the U.S. and global economy on it. 

Iridium, which launched in the 1990s, had an L-Band channel originally used to provide a global pager service, O’Connor said. Satelles’ engineers figured out how to design a signal that could use it for PNT: “You’re 25 times closer to the Earth, and that [pager] channel was a strong signal … 1,000 times stronger” than GPS, said O’Connor.  

By the time the service launched in 2016, North Korea had begun periodically jamming GPS signals over Seoul, and researchers from the University of Texas at Austin had shown how to take over drones by spoofing GPS signals. 

GPS antennas are generally able to receive the Iridium broadcast, explained O’Connor, and Satelles partnered with equipment manufacturers to update the software that interpreted the signal so it could get timing and positioning data from the signal.  

The initial customers were technology-driven businesses that used GPS for timing, rather than location, O’Connor said, like mobile phone network operators, cloud computing providers, and financial institutions. “We’re installed in major stock exchanges all around the world,” he said. “It turns out that if you can mess with the time at the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, bad guys can get up to all kinds of mischief.” 

Now that GPS interference is a reality, O’Connor said, Iridium’s LEO PNT is expanding into maritime, aviation, and other markets. “Industries out there are starting to recognize today that they have very serious problems around GPS jamming and spoofing. … Everyone’s seeing the writing on the wall that it is a problem, and you need a solution to that. And that’s our mission: To protect networks, protect our society, protect the fabric that keeps us connected.” 

Air Force Cuts Alternate PT Drills for Trainees amid ‘Complete Rewrite’ of BMT

Air Force Cuts Alternate PT Drills for Trainees amid ‘Complete Rewrite’ of BMT

June 30, 2025 | By David Roza

Trainees in Basic Military Training and technical school no longer have the option to try alternate PT drills if they fail an initial assessment, according to a policy change the Air Force made in April. The move is part of a larger shift out of the classroom and into hands-on, physically demanding scenarios to prepare Airmen for future conflict, officials said.

“In addition to these changes, the BMT curriculum is undergoing a complete rewrite to incorporate more physical training, focusing on the skills needed to defend, operate, generate, and sustain air and space power,” said Capt. Paige Skinner, a spokesperson for the 2nd Air Force, which runs Air Force enlisted training. The news was first reported by Stars & Stripes.

New recruits in BMT and Airmen in tech school preparing for their specific career field must meet or exceed the Air Force’s minimum standards for a physical fitness test involving pushups, sit-ups, and a 1.5-mile run. Before April, if participants failed to pass a component of the test they could retest using an alternate method and not have to retake the entire test. 

For example, if they failed at pushups, they could retest with traditional pushups or with hand-release pushups (where Airmen lower their chest all the way to the ground and extend their hands out to the sides before pushing up again). If they failed at situps, they could retest in that or with the reverse cross leg crunch. If they failed at the 1.5-mile run, they could retest in that or with a 20-meter high-aerobic multi-shuttle run (HAMR).

Today, if trainees fail at any of the components, they must retake the entire test in its original components.

The alternate components were initially authorized in October 2022, as the Air Force was coming back from the COVID-19 pandemic. During the early stages of the pandemic, physical fitness assessments were suspended for about six months as the service developed and implemented modified PT procedures “that would enable the training pipeline to continue operating safely,” Skinner explained. 

“The goal was to balance the need to maintain fitness standards with the need to protect trainees from the spread of the virus,” she added. 

As pandemic restrictions pulled back, normal fitness standards and procedures were reinstated, but the alternate exercises remained until this April. BMT trainees have to take the physical training test at least three times, during the first, third, and fifth weeks of training.

If trainees fail each of their three chances to pass the test, BMT group commanders review the case to decide whether the trainee will be washed back to another training flight, eliminated from BMT, or, in extraordinary circumstances such as an injury temporarily affecting performance, granted a waiver.

“Trainees are not authorized alternate test components to maintain consistency, standardization, and developmental expectations across the training pipeline,” Skinner explained. “The goal is to establish a common baseline of physical readiness.”

The update is part of a larger batch of changes at BMT. Starting this fall, officials plan to roll out a new curriculum for BMT that will focus on training Airmen and Space Force Guardians in much smaller groups and replace some classroom instruction with a more hands-on learning approach. There could also be more daily PT training and more exercises simulating combat.

“Basically, we’re trying to get our Airmen and Guardians prepared for, if they’re out in a deployed environment, ’Can you pull something? Can you push? Can you put something over your head?” Chief Master Sgt. Whitfield Jack, the senior noncommissioned officer for the 737th Training Group, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in May. “Can you bend down and squat and pick something up?’ … more litter carries and pulling rope and things like that.”

Trainees may find themselves working in 12- to 15-person teams instead of flights of 50 trainees, and they may work out 90 minutes a day rather than just an hour. These changes are themselves part of a larger shift across the Air Force to prepare troops for the physical and mental challenge of a future conflict, which could see Airmen launching and recovering aircraft from small, isolated airfields exposed to enemy attack.

“So it’s about creating that mindset and changing this concept of, ‘well, I’m not the person pulling the trigger, so I’m not really a warrior,’ to ‘what is it that I do that’s going to contribute to our success’ as that basic guiding principle,” Maj. Gen. Wolfe Davidson, who oversees Air Force enlisted training, said in May.

Indeed, Airmen across the force may have to hit the gym more often going forward. Earlier in June, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David A. Flosi told other enlisted leaders that upcoming PT tests may include a two-mile run, and that Airmen may have to take the assessment twice a year rather than once a year. No final decisions have been announced, however.

Flosi told the enlisted leaders that Airmen must be physically fit for combat, which they might face at any time.

“Any day could be the day—that’s what has been on my mind and the focus of your AF leadership this past couple weeks,” he wrote, referencing recent deployments to Europe and the Middle East as part of the U.S. response to rising tensions between Israel and Iran.

Senate Confirms New Commanders for Europe, Middle East, ACC

Senate Confirms New Commanders for Europe, Middle East, ACC

June 30, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The Senate confirmed new four-star leaders of U.S. forces in Europe and the Middle East, plus a new boss for the Air Force’s biggest command, over the weekend.

Lawmakers on June 29 also approved a reshuffling of Air Force officials that will put new faces in the service’s Pentagon headquarters.

The vote put Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, who will be promoted to four-star general, in charge of U.S. European Command. He’ll also lead NATO forces as the alliance’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, a role traditionally held by the EUCOM commander. Grynkewich, currently the Joint Staff’s operations director, is set to take over the twin role in a July 1 ceremony.

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper will also advance to U.S. Central Command’s top job as a four-star admiral after serving as its No. 2 officer since February 2024. CENTCOM did not respond to a query June 30 on when Cooper is expected to take command.

Within the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain, who currently serves as the Air Force’s operations chief, is set to take charge of Air Combat Command at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. He’ll be overseeing the Air Force’s largest swath of strike and reconnaissance aircraft as well as cyber and electronic warfare units after about 18 months of setting policy for combat units.

Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about joint force readiness, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 12, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Eric Dietrich)

Spain is succeeding Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach at ACC. Wilsbach made waves during his tenure with a renewed focus on standards and a revamped approach to readiness metrics.

Spain will be succeeded as the service’s deputy chief of staff for operations by Lt. Gen. Case A. Cunningham, who currently oversees troops in Alaska for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The Senate also confirmed Lt. Gen. John. J. DeGoes to run Air Force Medical Command in addition to his current role as the service’s surgeon general. The command oversees training and resources for battlefield medics and supports military-run health centers on bases around the world.

Lawmakers have yet to move forward on other key nominees connected to the Department of the Air Force.

Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Space Force’s No. 2 officer who was tapped to run the Pentagon’s Golden Dome domestic missile defense initiative, and Lt. Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, chosen to lead U.S. Africa Command, are awaiting hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Anderson would become the first Airman in that role if confirmed.

Matthew Lohmeier’s nomination for Air Force undersecretary has also remained in limbo since mid-May, pending a confirmation vote by the full Senate.

SDA’s Next Phase of Data Transport Satellites on Hold

SDA’s Next Phase of Data Transport Satellites on Hold

June 30, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The long-term future of one of the Space Development Agency’s two satellite constellations is on hold as officials study the options for replacing a planned “data transport layer” with one or more commercial solutions. President Trump’s proposed 2026 defense budget zeroes out funding for a future tranche of satellites.

SDA’s Transport Layer is intended to be the “backbone” of the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control system for moving data from sensors to shooters. The experimental Tranche 0 satellites have launched and contracts are already awarded to launch more than 300 Tranche 1 and 2 satellites beginning this summer and continuing into 2027. 

Now the Transport Layer’s Tranche 3 in doubt. A Department of the Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the 2026 budget request sent last week includes around $1.8 billion to continue Tranches 0, 1, and 2—but not Tranche 3—even though Tranche 3’s preliminary funding was included in fiscal 2025 and contracts had been expected this year. 

“DOD is conducting an Analysis of Alternatives to determine the requirements and architecture for proliferated SATCOM, to include both government-owned and commercial,” the spokesperson said. “A final decision on this architecture has not been made, but there is and will continue to be investment in commercial SATCOM appropriate to meet warfighter needs.”

An SDA spokesperson referred questions to the department.

The Space Force has yet to release detailed budgets for SDA’s Transport Layer program, but its funding does appear to be down some $300 million from last year’s request. 

Multiple lawmakers voiced concerns about potential cuts to the Tranche 3 Transport Layer to Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman during hearings in June.  

On June 5, Rep. Derek Tran (D-Calif.) asked Saltzman about “rumors” that Tranches 2 and 3 would be canceled and if he would commit to continuing Tranche 2. Saltzman endorsed Tranche 2 but did not comment on Tranche 3, saying “we’re committed to making sure that that program is successful and looking at the broad array of capabilities that might complement it.” 

On June 24, queried by both Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) about potentially cancelling Tranche 3, Saltzman indicated that phase would be on hold in 2026. “There’s still some money in Tranche 2 to continue to flesh out that space data transport network,” Saltzman said. “Now we have to look at what are the other avenues to deliver potentially a commercial proliferated low Earth orbit constellation. And so we are simply looking at alternatives as we look to the future as to what’s the best way to scale this up to the larger requirements for data transport.” 

SDA sent a notice to industry last year detailing plans for scores of Tranche 3 satellites in 2025, but earlier this spring the agency called off planned solicitations, saying they would “not proceed until further budgetary guidance has been received.” 

A gap in funding would push back potential Tranche 3 Transport launches beyond the originally planned start in late 2028. 

Still, SDA Director Derek M. Tournear indicated at last week’s Defense One Tech Summit that he was still thinking about Tranche 3, referring to how the agency is using lessons learned on Tranches 1 and 2 as it plans for integration on Tranche 3.

SDA is also still working on a Tranche 3 for its Tracking Layer, for missile tracking and warning.

The main alternative to the Transport Layer is “MILNET,” a secretive “future proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) satellite communications architecture that will provide global, integrated, and resilient capabilities across the Combat Power, Global Mission Data Transport, and Satellite Communications mission areas,” according to the DAF spokesperson. 

Tran and Coons both said they were told MILNET will consist of SpaceX commercial satellites in low-Earth orbit, but Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said was not necessarily correct. “MILNET … should not be taken as just a system,” he said. “How we field that going forward into the future is something that’s still under consideration.”

The DAF spokesperson said requirements and the architecture for MILNET are still in development, and suggested the department is looking to ensure neither SpaceX nor anyone else will dominate the program. 

“We are also investigating communication between different optical crosslinks in order to support a scalable multi-vendor satellite communication architecture that avoids vendor lock,” the spokesperson said. 

A Pentagon comptroller document lists “pLEO SATCOM (MILNET)” as earmarked for $277.4 million in fiscal 2026.  

A Space Systems Command program called pLEO that manages commercial satellite communications contracts for organizations across the Department of Defense. SpaceX has dominated that program through its Starlink and Starshield constellations, but it is unclear if or how that will be related to MILNET.