Desert Storm Scrapbook

The Air Force's new Aircraft Readiness Unit will maintain and provide Collaborative Combat Aircraft for operations, but won’t serve as a “schoolhouse” teaching fighter pilots how to manage these escort drones.

The U.S. has approved a $310.5 million Foreign Military Sale to provide Ukraine with maintenance and training for its F-16 fighter jets, the State Department announced May 2. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force has been sending retired F-16s to Ukraine to be used for spare parts.

The United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force has unveiled a new electronic warfare drone designed to fly with fighter jets into contested airspace, including alongside its fleet of F-35s. RAF says it plans to develop models that draw on the U.S. Air Force’s approach of mating unmanned systems with crewed platforms.

There are many use cases for different kinds of artificial intelligence in the Space Force, but the service is moving cautiously towards adoption, hampered in part by a disconnect with vendors, officials said May 1. 

President Donald Trump is proposing a 13 percent increase in defense spending for fiscal 2026, growth that could mean the first ever $1 trillion defense budget, according to a document obtained by Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

The Space Force relies entirely on data—but it lacks the systems and tools to analyze and share that data properly even within the service, let alone with international partners, officials said May 1. 

The total number of reported sexual assaults in the Department of the Air Force ticked up about two percent in 2024 while still trailing the total from 2022, as Pentagon officials say a hiring freeze on federal government civilian employees limits their ability to fill critical sexual assault prevention and…

Matthew Lohmeier, who was fired from a Space Force squadron command just two years ago, took another step in his unlikely journey to the Department of the Air Force's No. 2 job May 1, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee that his background as an Air Force F-15C pilot…

Air Force exercises in the Indo-Pacific may soon get even bigger and more robust, as lawmakers move to invest more than $620 million in such efforts. The bulk of that money, contained in a $150 billion reconciliation package currently making its way through Congress, is $532.6 million for earmarked for…