The Air National Guard boss, Lt. Gen. Craig McKinley has no illusions about the state of the Air Guard fighter force, which generally “has always had older equipment than the Air Force,” he told the On Guard in a year-end interview. It was an ANG F-15C that disintegrated in mid-air in November, prompting the extended stand-down of the F-15 Eagle fleet. McKinley reminds us, “That airplane was a 1980 F-15C model, and we have older F-15s than that in some of our units. … We need to be very cautious about preserving the resources we have, having a plan to modernize those and to be extremely careful so that we don’t put our pilots at risk when we fly these older aircraft.”
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.