Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the officer who has overseen the Air Staff’s intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance office (A2) since July 2006 and been the driving force behind the Air Force’s ISR transformation, is retiring, service officials announced Thursday. As a denizen of the famous “Black Hole” in Saudi Arabia, he was the principal attack planner for the Desert Storm air campaign. In the late 1990s, he served as joint task force commander for Operation Northern Watch and there flew 82 combat missions. He later ran the air operations center during the early air war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. Deptula entered the Air Force as a student pilot in 1976. During his career, he amassed more than 3,000 flight hours in F-15s, T-37s, and T-38s. This includes more than 400 combat hours. Deptula’s successor hasn’t been announced yet. (For more on Deptula, see ISR Revolution from the June issue of Air Force Magazine and Beyond CAP Fixation from the Daily Report archive.)
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.
