Pentagon Deploys F-22s as Trump Weighs Strikes on Iran

June 18, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors landed at RAF Lakenheath in England June 18 as President Donald Trump weighs whether to join Israel’s attacks on Iran.

Multiple Raptors landed at the British base, which is often a stopover location for fighters headed to the Middle East. The 1st Fighter Wing jets took off from their home base at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., according to local observers and flight-tracking data.

The U.S. has also dispatched over two dozen tankers to Europe and ordered the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to speed its deployment to the U.S. Central Command area, as the Pentagon bolsters its airpower in the Middle East.

The U.S. has thus far declined to take on an offensive role in the nascent war, either through strikes on Iran or by refueling Israeli aircraft.

“I have ideas on what to do, but I haven’t made a final [decision]—I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due,” Trump told reporters at the White House June 18. “I may do it, I may not do it.”

The F-22, the U.S. premier fifth-generation air superiority fighter, has often been mobilized in times of tension with Iran. Most recently, the U.S. rushed F-22s from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, last August after Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a bomb smuggled into the house in Tehran where he was staying—an attack Iran blamed on Israel.

F-22s are capable of shooting down Iranian drones and could also be used to escort less stealthy aircraft into hostile airspace, and open-source flight tracking data indicates that F-16s and F-35s are also likely being deployed.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the F-22 deployment or any additional fighter movements.

A likely target if the U.S. does decide to intervene is Fordow, Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility. The facility is buried in a mountain and is so heavily defended that many experts believe the U.S. is the only country that possesses the necessary bombers and munitions to destroy it.

A U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely be executed in part by multiple B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., carrying 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bombs to target Fordow.

“We’re the only ones that have the capability to do it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it,” Trump said when asked about Fordow June 18. “These are incredible planes and weapons.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress that morning that a decision whether to strike Iran would be made “at the presidential level.”

“At the Defense Department, our job is to stand ready and prepared with options. And that’s precisely what we’re doing,” Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

America and its allies are offering Israel defensive military assistance to defeat incoming drones and missiles, as they have during the country’s previous confrontations with Iran. U.S. fighters have helped to protect Israel by fending off Iranian drones, and U.S Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense batteries and Aegis-equipped U.S. Navy warships have helped down Iranian missiles.

In April 2024, support from U.S. and allied fighter jets and air defenses brought down roughly 80 drones and six missiles—some of the 300 projectiles sent towards Israel in that skirmish—and helped Israel weather an attack by 200 Iranian missiles last October. In both cases, the U.S. rushed more warplanes to the region just prior to the attacks.

“From the beginning of Operation Rising Lion, the Iranian Regime has fired approximately 400 ballistic missiles and 1,000 UAVs at Israel,” an Israeli military official said. Israeli officials say that approximately 20 ballistic missiles have hit civilian areas in Israel.

Foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the European Union are scheduled to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghch June 20 in Geneva.

House Appropriators Want More Transparency for Big-Ticket Air Force Buys

June 18, 2025 | By Matthew Cox

The House Appropriations Committee wants the Air Force to be more open about how it manages its multibillion-dollar weapons acquisitions to ensure they are fully funded and ready for the next fight.

In a report accompanying the committee’s proposed 2026 defense budget, the committee recommended that Air Force Secretary Troy Meink significantly improve how the service identifies and prioritizes the new capabilities it needs to deter and, if necessary, defeat other technologically advanced adversaries such as China on the future battlefield.

House appropriators sent the draft budget bill on to the full chamber in a 36-27 vote June 12, even though the Pentagon has not yet publicly released its 2026 budget request that lawmakers would typically use as a starting point.

Committee members expressed concerns over how the Air Force reallocated roughly one-third of the $3.2 billion Congress provided to continue developing the high-priority Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile in fiscal 2025.

The committee said the Air Force has created confusion in the budget process by grouping the next-generation F-47 fighter and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft drone wingman program into a single pot of money. Lawmakers also dinged the service for failing to modernize flight simulators for the B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

As a path forward, the committee is pushing the Air Force’s new Integrated Capabilities Command to redefine the service’s needs, develop feasible modernization plans, and execute realistic acquisitions to support troops, according to the report.

The Air Force stood up a provisional version of the new command last fall with the goal of reaching full operations sometime this year. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said the goal is to create a unified organization that will lead force modernization efforts and keep various branches of the service aligned on the way ahead.

To maintain oversight, House appropriators would require Meink to brief both the House and Senate armed services committees on the status and cost estimates of standing up the ICC and its subordinate offices, how it might impact current programs and whether the strategic basing process is required for their establishment.

The committee would also require ICC leadership to provide semi-annual briefings to both appropriations committees on how its offices are working to achieve strategic modernization, recapitalization, and resourcing for the Air Force.

In the short term, the committee wants more details on spending decisions for Sentinel, echoing concerns of lawmakers on other congressional panels. In early June, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) pressed Air Force leaders why the service had reduced the $3.2 billion budget for Sentinel by roughly $1.2 billion to fund other programs. He and other lawmakers voiced worry that Sentinel won’t be ready to replace the current Minuteman III missiles before they are too old to be effective.

“An adjustment of this magnitude should have been accompanied by proactive communications including robust details on a rephasing plan,” the House Appropriations report said.

The committee recommends just over $2 billion for Sentinel for 2026, as additional funds may become available through reconciliation, the report added. The sweeping tax-and-spending bill in the works by congressional Republicans could offer up to $2.5 billion to develop the new land-based nuclear missiles.

“Given significant cost changes projected for this effort,” the committee would direct Meink to provide an update as soon as possible on the ICBM’s new price tag as well as quarterly briefings on program updates and cost data.

The committee also took issue with the Air Force’s practice of combining the F-47 and CCAs under the Next-Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, program funding line.

“The co-mingling of two significant acquisition programs limited Congress’ ability to track how funding was allocated between NGAD and CCA efforts within the year of execution,” the report said. For more visibility into cost and performance, the committee recommended moving the CCA into a separate funding line from NGAD.

CCAs are envisioned as artificially intelligent drone wingmen that can significantly increase airpower while taking Airmen out of harm’s way. The committee recommended roughly $495 million for the CCA program in fiscal 2026; another $678 million may come through the reconciliation package. That totals $1.2 billion, up from the Air Force’s $804 million request for CCAs.

House appropriators recommended $3.2 billion for F-47 in the base budget, slightly lower than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Air Force needs for the sixth-generation fighter that will provide the service with greater range and more advanced stealth capability.

The committee also said the Air Force needs to invest more to modernize B-52 flight simulators. It recommended just over $26 million for the Air Force to collect, analyze, and prepare flight simulation and modeling for the B-52H.

HAC would require Meink to brief the congressional defense committees on the service’s strategy and cost estimates to develop, test, and procure modernized B-52H high-fidelity flight simulators.

Trump Formally Nominates Guetlein as Golden Dome Czar

June 18, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The White House this week formally tapped the Space Force’s No. 2 officer to oversee the sweeping Golden Dome missile defense project.

Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, the vice chief of space operations, is nominated to take on the role of “direct reporting program manager” for Golden Dome, the Pentagon announced June 18. A June 16 notice in the Congressional Record indicated Guetlein would be reassigned but did not specify his new job.

President Donald Trump announced Guetlein would run the Golden Dome program at a White House press conference last month.

Golden Dome is envisioned as a massive network of sensors, interceptor weapons, and electronic-attack tools that—like its inspiration, Israel’s Iron Dome—would protect the United States from ballistic and cruise missiles. Trump is pushing for the project to become operational by the end of his term in 2029, a goal defense experts say is unlikely.

Guetlein will be tasked with pulling together existing military systems—relying heavily on the military space enterprise that the four-star has helped build—and fielding new ones to track, warn of, and disable or destroy incoming missiles, similar to the Reagan-era “Star Wars” initiative that failed to come to fruition.

Such an enterprise would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to develop and launch. Trump has projected a $175 billion price tag, while an independent estimate pegged the cost of space-based missile interceptors alone at more than $542 billion over 20 years.

Guetlein, who has likened Golden Dome’s scope to the Manhattan Project that developed America’s first nuclear weapons, is no stranger to major acquisition initiatives. The general led the Space Force’s acquisition branch, Space Systems Command, for two years following stints as deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office and a program executive at the Missile Defense Agency.

He’ll become the face of one of Trump’s top defense priorities, particularly as the administration looks to jumpstart its progress with a $25 billion infusion of funds through the massive GOP-led spending package under consideration on Capitol Hill. It’s unclear how much money the Pentagon is seeking for Golden Dome in total next year.

Republicans and Democrats alike have criticized the Trump administration for seeking billions of dollars to fund Golden Dome in 2026 with few details of how it would spend that money.

“We still haven’t seen a clear definition of what it is,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, said June 10. He questioned how Golden Dome would protect the continental U.S., as well as Hawaii and Alaska, without “spending a lot of money unnecessarily.”

Over the course of several recent congressional hearings, lawmakers and defense officials have begun piecing together a clearer picture of how Golden Dome might work. Air Force and Space Force leaders expect their services will play a significant part in bringing Golden Dome to life.

Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top officer, told House lawmakers June 5 Golden Dome will spur the service to take on requirements for missions that have never been accomplished by a military space organization. He expects leaders will lay the “foundational groundwork” for Golden Dome by the end of September, noting that the Space Force is already discussing how to integrate its systems with other military services and agencies.

Defense officials have floated several ideas of existing and future technologies that could become part of Golden Dome.

Plugged into that network could be heat-seeking sensors and artificial intelligence-powered targeting tools; Northrop Grumman’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Satellites that are designed to follow low-flying, fast-moving weapons; and undersea submarine-tracking sensors, among other equipment, military officials told lawmakers.

“I think that it’s a seabed-to-space approach,” said U.S. Northern Command boss Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, who is also the country’s top homeland defense officer as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

“We need to have undersea sensors to detect submarines that can now get closer to North America than they could before based on improved stealthiness of those ships,” he told senators May 13. “Then a ground layer that can see much further out because of the advanced standoff weapons that our adversaries can now employ.”

Then add an air layer, like the E-7 Wedgetail airborne target-tracking plane, and a space layer, he said. The Pentagon has indicated it will abandon the Air Force’s plan to buy a fleet of Wedgetails in favor of eventually relying on satellites to track airborne targets—an approach critics say would leave the U.S. military far short of the aircraft- and missile-tracking capabilities it needs until those space assets are ready.

“I suspect that [Golden Dome] would be able to use a lot of the systems that are already in place and currently in development, which would give us a full capability in probably something closer to zero to five years, as opposed to something a decade out into the future,” Guillot said.

The project will also require a buildup of radars and military communications infrastructure around population centers and defense sites, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) added June 18 at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the 2026 defense budget.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin cautioned that the whole Golden Dome enterprise—from the sensors that see an enemy strike to the software that processes reconnaissance images and the weapons that neutralize a threat—”all has to be stitched together.” The service has struggled to network its own sensors and shooters as an alternative to jet-based battle management over the past several years.

“We’re doing the mission analysis,” Allvin said at the June 5 House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of the Air Force’s budget request. “Which systems are required . . . so we can move data to the right places and most effectively orchestrate a very complex mission set?”

While Saltzman said at the June 5 hearing it’s too early in that analysis to know whether Golden Dome would protect the U.S. from bomb-laden small drones like those that attacked Russian bomber aircraft earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers a few days later that the Pentagon’s 2026 budget request includes “robust increases” in hypersonic weapons, drones and counter-drone technology, and surveillance tools that could become part of Golden Dome.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told House lawmakers June 12 that the Defense Department is looking at ballistic missile defenses like the Army’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system and the Navy’s Aegis Ashore system to ensure they can connect to offer all-encompassing protection without any gaps.

Among the biggest lessons the U.S. can adopt from Iron Dome is Israel’s insistence on plug-and-play technology—unlike America’s bespoke systems that often need modifications or add-ons to talk to other military equipment.

“You cannot even sell a system to the Israeli military . . . that is not open architecture, that will not work with the rest of their systems, so you don’t end up with a proprietary system that’s standalone,” U.S. Central Command boss Gen. Michael E. Kurilla told HASC June 10. “We need systems that can integrate and all talk to each other.”

A spokesperson for the Senate Armed Services Committee did not answer June 18 when the panel might consider Guetlein’s nomination.

If Guetlein is confirmed, his departure from Space Force leadership would leave the Air Force and Space Force without Senate-approved vice chiefs. Trump fired Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife in February’s purge of top brass that also included the ousters of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown Jr. and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

Hegseth said at the time the firings sought to “focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars.”

Spain Tapped as New Air Combat Command Boss

June 18, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain has been nominated to lead Air Combat Command, the service’s biggest command, the Pentagon announced June 18.

If confirmed, Spain would replace Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, who is retiring, and command more than 150,000 personnel and 1,000 aircraft from ACC headquarters at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va.

Lt. Gen. Case A. Cunningham, commander of U.S. Alaska Command, has been nominated to succeed Spain as the Air Force A-3, the Pentagon said.

Spain has been the principal architect of the Air Force’s plan to overhaul combat deployments around the world. As the A-3, he drove an evolution from “crowd-sourced” commands to air task forces and, beginning next year, deployable combat wings. The aim is to train more capable, cohesive teams that rotate into overseas assignments in a more predictable manner than has been typical in the past 10-15 years.

“America’s Air Force stands ready and able to defend the homeland, ensure a robust nuclear deterrent via our two legs of the nuclear triad, and project power around the world to deter and win as the nation requires,” Spain told House lawmakers last month. “Today’s airmen will do so with the oldest airplanes, the smallest force and with fewer flying hours than at any point in our history. Airmen have and always will get the job done. But today, they do so at elevated risk.”

ACC is responsible for organizing, training, and equipping most of the service’s air, cyber and electronic warfare forces, and is expected to take a lead role in measuring and ensuring the readiness of combat forces across the breadth of the Air Force under plans unveiled just over a year ago.

Spain faces significant challenges within ACC, where he will inherit decades-old equipment and must begin the process of planning to integrate next-generation weapons such as the F-47 fighter, unmanned collaborative combat aircraft, and more.

“The sooner we get the older aircraft off of our books and off our flight lines and into new capability, the better off for the Air Force,” Spain told lawmakers in May.

A fighter pilot who has racked up over 2,150 flight hours in over a dozen airframes, including more than 200 in F-15s and F-22s, Spain became the Air Force A-3 in December 2023. He has held several staff positions at U.S. military commands around the world, including U.S. European Command, U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Force Africa. He also led the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates and the 53rd Wing, a major test unit at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Replacing Spain in the Pentagon would be Cunningham, a fighter pilot who has commanded the famed Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team, led an expeditionary reconnaissance wing in Afghanistan, and worked at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He has also run a key drone wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., and an air wing in Japan. His staff jobs included stints at ACC and with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The Congressional Record noted Spain’s nomination for a fourth star on June 17 but did not specify which job he would hold.

Both Spain and Cunningham’s nominations require Senate confirmation.

US Air Force Reaper Drones to Test New Anti-Hacking Software

June 17, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The computer code that runs the MQ-9 Reaper drone will be overhauled in the next two years to test revolutionary new tools that would make its software “much, much harder to hack,” the Air Force says.

Oren Edwards, chief engineer for the Medium Altitude Unmanned Aircraft Systems Division at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, made the announcement June 17.

The new tools will analyze past versions of the Reaper’s operational software “all the way from the user interface to the flight control commands,” Edwards told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Analyzing these older versions with the new tools, collectively dubbed “formal methods,” will demonstrate that the new tools are better at finding software flaws than conventional testing, Edwards said. Hackers seek to exploit those vulnerabilities to gain control of the systems.

Kathleen Fisher, director of the Information Innovation Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, said the Reaper demonstration is the first of four in a campaign to promote the tools and to “significantly move the needle” on cybersecurity. The other three demonstrations, which will also be jointly funded by DARPA and their military service partners, will work with the Army, Navy, and a NASA-Space Force team, she said.

Formal methods provide mathematical proofs of software capabilities, ensuring the programs perform as intended—and only as intended, Fisher explained.

Conventional software testing verifies what software can do, but testing can’t prove a negative, she said: “It can never tell you what the system will never do.”

It simply isn’t feasible to test all the possible ways a software program might behave, she said.

“You can never, ever get enough test cases to get a guarantee the system will never do ‘this,'” she said. “But with formal methods, you can get those guarantees.”

She offered an analogy to physical security: “Right now, where we are with cybersecurity is, our doors are open, our windows are open,” she said. “We actually know how to close the doors and lock the windows. And we are choosing not to use that technology. We’re choosing to leave the doors open, leave the windows up and not use the locks.”

Using formal methods won’t make software impervious to hackers, however. Locking doors and windows doesn’t make a house impenetrable, Fisher said.

“A skilled, well-resourced adversary can probably still break in,” Fisher said. “But it will make it much, much harder to hack, and it will give us more time to defend ourselves.”

“Formal methods work when you’re talking about any kind of software systems or any kind of hardware systems,” she added. “They are very, very broadly applicable.”

DARPA Deputy Director Rob McHenry said the new formal methods can break the so-called “iron triangle”—generally summed up as “Cheap, fast, good: Pick any two you want.”

“Think about code development,” he said. “How much of the code development process is debugging? We write bad code informally, and then we spend a whole bunch of time trying to debug it and make sure it actually works as we want it to.”

Formal methods cost more up front in time and effort but eliminate the need for debugging because it mathematically proves the absence of bugs.

“If you start with a slightly higher investment in time in the beginning to make [a] formal methods architecture, you practically eliminate the debugging piece of code development, and that’s a massive curtailment of the cost and time” of the whole project, McHenry said.

DARPA has been working on formal methods for 13 years, since launching the High Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) program in 2012. But even within the cybersecurity field, the tools are poorly understood.

Now that is set to change, McHenry said. Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing provider, “has embedded formal methods throughout their operations at scale,” he said. In an organization almost as large as the Department of Defense—Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people—the company is doing the experiment for DARPA, he said.

“They have taken what was early technology coming out of the HACMS program. They have done the piloting within their organization, McHenry said.

“They have seen the successes, and now they’ve scaled it broadly and depend on it day in and day out,” for core functions like securing data and identifying users, he said.

“It is not a DARPA dream,” said McHenry. “We have evidence from real-world implementations that show us we’re ready to scale this across the Department of Defense.”

Pentagon Puts Greenland Under US Northern Command

June 17, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Pentagon has given U.S. Northern Command responsibility for U.S. military operations in and near Greenland after President Donald Trump expressed interest in acquiring the Danish territory.

Defending Greenland was previously the responsibility of U.S. European Command. But Greenland, an icy island in the High North between North America and Europe, will now fall under NORTHCOM.

The “change will strengthen the joint force’s ability to defend the U.S. homeland, contributing to a more robust defense of the Western Hemisphere and deepening relationships with Arctic allies and partners,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.

The move was highly anticipated as the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reviewed the U.S. command structure. But it also has political resonance in light of Trump’s goal of making the territory part of the United States.

The administration has also reportedly considered combining U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command and placing U.S. Africa Command under U.S. European Command. But no other changes to how the Pentagon manages operations around the world were announced.

In May, Hegseth ordered a 10-percent reduction in the number of general and flag officers through a “realignment” of the unified command plan—part of an overall plan to reduce the number of generals by 20 percent across the military. But the Pentagon has yet to spell out how the reorganization of commands would achieve that aim.

Denmark, which governs Greenland as a semi-autonomous territory, is a NATO ally of the U.S. and has rebuffed Trump’s desire to annex the island.

“We look forward to working with Greenland to ensure that it is secured from any potential threats,” Hegseth told Congress earlier this month. He repeatedly declined to directly answer questions from lawmakers about military plans to acquire the territory.

The island is home to a key Space Force installation, Pituffik Space Base. It was formerly known as Thule Air Base when it was controlled by the Air Force, and has long been an important outpost for the U.S. military, first as a Strategic Air Command base during the Cold War and later taking on space-related missions.

Trump administration officials have stressed Greenland’s strategic importance, which abuts the Arctic Ocean and houses missile warning and satellite control facilities. Shifting oversight of U.S. military operations in Greenland will place the territory under NORTHCOM boss Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, who also leads the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

“There’s been really an enhanced attention … to the security importance of the Arctic and High North to collective defense,” a senior NATO official told reporters June 17, speaking on the condition of anonymity during an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

Danish officials pledged to invest in the island but have pushed back on Trump’s desire to control Greenland.

“We are willing to invest more in the development of the Greenlandic society,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said June 17. She said that could include investments in “critical infrastructure that both has a defense and military perspective.”

One plan that has been under consideration within the Trump administration would propose that Greenland declare its independence from Denmark and then enter into a “Compact of Free Association” with the U.S. The U.S has such agreements with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau in the Pacific. Those nations remain independent but allow the U.S. military to operate extensively in exchange for America’s pledge to provide essential services.

B-52 Engine Replacement Slowed by Inlet Issues

June 17, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The B-52 bomber’s re-engining program has hit a delay as an inlet redesign pushes the critical design review into next year. Despite the setback, a federal watchdog agency says initial operational capability remains on track for 2033.

The 10-month delay stems from “ongoing engine inlet issues” discovered during testing, the Government Accountability Office said in its annual report on the progress of major weapons programs, released last week. Distortion was creating non-uniform airflow that can affect the engine’s performance, spurring the need for a redesign.

GAO also said the delay was caused by a lag in Boeing’s paperwork, and faulted the company for not taking a more comprehensive, digital approach to the program.

The watchdog office also said it will take nearly 50% longer to complete a related effort to modernize the bomber’s radar, totaling nearly nine years rather than about five. The Air Force recently indicated that delay would likely trigger a so-called Nunn-McCurdy breach, which prompts the Pentagon to review an acquisition program and reset its expected cost and schedule.

The two modernization programs comprise the bulk of Stratofortress upgrades designed to keep the 64-year-old bomber fleet flying for another 50 years. Boeing is the overall integrator for the engine, radar and other B-52 upgrades.

The redesign is isolated to the inlet, provided by Boeing, rather than the Rolls-Royce F130 engine that will replace the eight Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines on each B-52. Air enters a jet engine through its inlet, which directs the flow through the compressor and affects the amount of thrust an engine can achieve. The program office told the GAO that the inlet now “meets performance and operability requirements,” according to the report.

Wind tunnel testing of the redesigned inlet is slated to wrap up this summer. An Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine the service aims to formally start more intensive development on the re-engining program this summer as well.

The critical design review is expected next April, “three years later than originally planned,” GAO added. An initial production decision is now projected for March 2028 at the earliest, after two test aircraft are delivered. The Air Force plans to flight-test the new engines for 18 months before industry starts installing them on the operational fleet.

The Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP) will replace the engines, engine struts, the electrical power generation system, and engine cockpit displays for the B-52H fleet.

While the effort used “some digital engineering and virtual prototyping practices during [the] rapid prototyping effort,” it did not use them to its full advantage, the GAO said. Boeing argues it’s difficult to use digital engineering practices on legacy systems.

The program “is currently using some digital models, including aviation performance, system, and computational fluid dynamics models to support design decisions and develop the engine modification,” the GAO noted.

Boeing plans to create a single source of information to share details of the project with its stakeholders, the GAO said. But that “digital thread” won’t offer the real-time data that would be generated by a digital model of the inlet, the watchdog noted. Most of the new components are modified commercial items that can’t be easily repurposed into a new design, Boeing told the GAO.

The engine replacement transitioned from a faster middle-tier acquisition program to a more traditional major equipment acquisition in December 2023. That added a year to the program, the GAO said, noting that the engineering, manufacturing, and development phase was to start this month. But the Air Force declined to comment on whether that has happened, or if it will by the end of the month.

The GAO also said the program’s software drops have been running six months late.

The program office said the CERP production strategy “strikes a balance between risk and urgency; involves extensive component and subsystem testing in integration laboratories and is augmented by digital modeling; and is structured to reduce risk prior to production.”

B-52 Radar Modernization

The radar modernization program—which will replace the current and obsolete AN/APQ-166 radar used for mapping and targeting with the AN/APQ-188 on all 76 B-52H aircraft—“continues to struggle with schedule delays while mitigating cost increases,” the GAO reported.

The Air Force recently said the program will see a “non-critical” Nunn-McCurdy breach, meaning its baseline schedule or cost has grown by up to 15 percent. The bomber requires the radar “for mission-essential aircraft navigation and weather avoidance,” GAO said, but currently suffers from obsolete radar technology and a dwindling supplier base.

GAO noted the radar modernization’s first two low-rate production decisions have each been pushed back by almost a year, to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 and the second quarter of fiscal 2027, respectively. The program office chalked up the delays to “environmental qualification, parts procurement, and software,”driving up costs as well, the GAO said.

The Air Force expects to have a revised cost estimate for the radar modernization this summer, GAO said. An integration lab that could help speed development planned to open its doors in May.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity panel on May 8, Darlene Costello, then one of the Air Force’s top acquisition officials, said she is “pretty confident” the radar program’s woes won’t get markedly worse, triggering further oversight. That’s why the service is continuing with the program, she said.

“We believe we can find an affordable way forward to deliver the needed capability,” Costello said, perhaps by shrinking the scope of the upgrade and adding more improvements later.

The GAO said the delays could “provide the program with an opportunity to embrace an iterative development effort, wherein the minimum viable product’s design matures with each iteration, resources are based on demonstrated achievement, and potential problems are identified early through collaboration with stakeholders.” Defense acquisition programs have long been plagued with setbacks because they wait to develop a slew of capabilities before fielding new equipment or software, rather than offering troops a minimum viable product and improving it later.

Like the re-engining effort, the radar modernization isn’t using modern digital design tools that help develop equipment faster. The program office told GAO that a digital twin or thread is “difficult and costly to develop, largely due to 20-year-old radar hardware design” on the venerable bomber.

The new radar expects to complete testing in June 2028, with initial operational capability and full-rate production to follow by May 2030.

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in May that if the B-52 upgrade “goes worse than we hope, then we would need more” brand-new B-21 stealth bombers.

One Hypersonic Missile’s Delay May Explain Comeback of Another

June 16, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile is delayed and may significantly overrun its expected cost, which could partially explain why the service is reviving the hypersonic AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid-Response Weapon.

The Government Accountability Office, in its annual report to Congress on the status of various major defense programs, said last week that the HACM is “behind schedule,” though the Air Force is working with prime contractor Raytheon and engine supplier Northrop Grumman to field the weapon on time.

The service and the contractors are working to “develop a new schedule baseline that still adheres to the 5-year time frame for rapid prototyping efforts,” which calls for initial fielding of HACM around 2027.

Raytheon, a division of RTX, is “projecting that it will significantly exceed its cost baseline” for HACM, the GAO reported. The Air Force is considering dropping two flight tests as a cost-saving measure to get spending back on track, the watchdog agency said.

HACM, the Air Force’s preferred hypersonic missile, is envisioned as a weapon small enough to be carried by F-15 or other fighters and able to travel at five times the speed of sound. The HACM vehicle is propelled to hypersonic speed by a booster that separates from the main weapon; the vehicle then ignites an air-breathing engine that powers it to its target.

“The Air Force plans to build 13 missiles during the rapid prototyping effort,” the GAO said, “including test assets, spares, and rounds for initial operational capability.”

The service expects to start rapidly fielding missiles in fiscal 2027 before tweaking its design ahead of full production, “based on global power competition and urgency” to address threats, GAO said. A decision to begin full production would come in 2029, the Air Force told the watchdog agency.

In April, the Air Force declined to comment when asked if the HACM would fly for the first time in the first quarter of 2025 as planned. A service spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine at the time that the service would begin withholding information on its hypersonics programs for security reasons. A Raytheon spokesperson directed all inquiries to the Air Force.

The HACM is one of several hypersonic design initiatives underway within the Air Force. Lockheed Martin tried to develop the AGM-183 ARRW in a rapid maturation effort that yielded mixed results in testing. Though the last few tests, which mimicked operational flight, were generally satisfactory, the service paused funding for the effort in its fiscal 2025 budget.

The Air Force said hoped to continue research and development using data acquired from the program, but Andrew Hunter, the service’s former acquisition boss, told the House Armed Services Committee’s tactical air and land forces panel in 2023 that the Air Force did not “intend to pursue follow-on procurement of the ARRW once the prototyping program concludes.” A senior service official later reported the ARRW was “officially dead.”

That seems to have changed, however. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told House lawmakers on June 5 that the service’s fiscal 2026 budget request will include two different hypersonic weapon programs. That includes ARRW, a “larger form factor [missile] that is more strategic, long-range, that we have already tested several times,” he said.

Allvin said the Air Force is accelerating ARRW’s development as well as procurement.

In the same hearing, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the Air Force is determined not to buy a token number of hypersonic missiles. “We’ve got to be able to buy more than 10,” he said, adding that the Air Force has “a big focus” on achieving scale and low cost for the weapons.

Unlike the HACM, ARRW is a large weapon that will be carried solely on a B-52 bomber’s wing pylons. The booster—borrowed from an Army Tactical Missile System rocket—propels the warhead to hypersonic speed, after which it glides to its target. The Air Force prefers the HACM, though, because it is smaller, more maneuverable and longer-range because of its air-breathing engine. The weapon may also be carried by a broader range of fighters and bombers in the future.

A former senior defense official argues it makes sense to keep ARRW going because the HACM’s delays are “just what you would expect with a cutting-edge technology.”

“It’s generally a good idea to have an alternative,” he said.

Even if HACM works out, he added, then the Air Force has two options instead of becoming dependent on a single one. “We will learn a lot from continuing to fly ARRW,” he said, and that learning can shape other hypersonics programs.

Raytheon has received about $1.4 billion from the Air Force for the HACM program so far. The missile began as a middle-tier acquisition program, which can move faster than typical procurement, but will likely become a more traditional major defense acquisition program at some point.

The GAO said HACM’s preliminary design review, slated for March 2024, was postponed by six months because “the program needed more time to finalize the hardware design.” Quoting Air Force officials, the GAO said “another review, scheduled for 2025, would validate the fully operational configuration for use in the final flight tests.”

“Program officials said that the delays will reduce the number of flight tests the program can conduct during the 5-year rapid prototyping effort from seven to five,” the watchdog added.

Even with five test flights instead of seven, the Air Force told the GAO “that the program will still be able to establish sufficient confidence in the missile to declare it operational and to meet all the [rapid acquisition] objectives.”

The HACM program “is prioritizing capabilities that can be fielded quickly,” GAO said The Air Force is deciding which capabilities it wants in a minimum viable product, and will set those criteria in the missile’s final design review this year.

As part of that process, the HACM program is soliciting operator feedback on the missile’s design and tracking digital information for “every part with a serial number,” GAO said. Raytheon can then assemble the digital components into a model that can be tested in simulations.

The program told GAO that it has “revised its transition strategy to align with Air Force goals for having a larger inventory of missiles sooner, while simultaneously improving the manufacturability of the design and expanding the capacity of the industrial base,” the report said.

Tankers Deploy to Europe as US Weighs Options in Israel-Iran War

June 16, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

Dozens of aerial refueling tankers have flown from American military bases to Europe as the U.S. considers its options for potential involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict, U.S. officials said. The Navy has also dispatched the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Middle East from the Pacific.

The armada of over two dozen tankers—a mix of KC-46 Pegasus and KC-135 Stratotanker jets—deployed to Morón Air Base, Spain; Ramstein Air Base, Germany; and other European bases, according to open-source flight tracking data.

U.S. officials said the forward deployment provided President Donald Trump and the U.S. military with more flexibility in their decision-making. As of June 16, the tankers did not appear to be heading farther east to U.S.-run bases in the Middle East. The U.S. Air Force’s Europe-based aerial refueling jets occasionally support missions in U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged June 16 he has ordered additional U.S. forces to the Middle East, but did not provide further details.

“Over the weekend, I directed the deployment of additional capabilities to the United States Central Command Area of Responsibility,” he wrote on X. “Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region.”

Israel began striking military and nuclear targets June 12 using over 200 warplanes, according to the Israel Defense Forces, and has continued every day since. The Trump administration has said that the U.S. is not involved in Israel’s ongoing air campaign against Iran.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News June 16 the U.S. has helped defend Israel against Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone strikes.

“We’ve gotten tremendous help from President Trump,” Netanyahu said. “American pilots are shooting down drones that are aimed at our cities along with our pilots. We have two THAAD batteries that are based in Israel that are helping bring down these murderous missiles. We have Aegis ships that are helping us. And it’s deeply appreciated. As far as what else America will do, that’s up to President Trump.”

The Biden administration offered similar assistance during shorter confrontations between the rival countries last year. U.S. and allied fighter jets and air defense systems last April helped down roughly 80 drones and six missiles—some of the 300 projectiles sent towards Israel in that skirmish—and helped Israel fend off an attack by 200 Iranian missiles in October.

The United Kingdom said June 15 it sent additional fighter jets to the region. The Royal Air Force has also defended Israel from Iranian attacks in the past.