Air Force to Finally Take Lead on Network for Joint Fires as It Consolidates C2

Sept. 24, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—After more than a year of preparation, a once-obscure Air Force program office will on Oct. 1 assume management of a key effort to network forces from every military service in near real time, culminating an expansion that has placed it at the center of the joint force’s vision for a digital future.

The program executive office for command, control, communications, and battle management, will stand up its integrated program office for the Joint Fires Network, or JFN, next week, PEO C3BM Commander Maj. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 23.

The Joint Fires Network began life as an ambitious, under-funded experiment by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command—an attempt to build out the long-standing Pentagon vision of a totally networked force, where sensors like radar, surveillance drones, and even satellites could be connected in real time with shooters like Navy cruisers, Army artillery, or Air Force fighters and bombers—and where allies could contribute to and make use of a common operational picture..

Combined Joint All-Domain Command & Control, or CJADC2, as the vision was dubbed, would allow commanders to call in strikes from land, sea, or air with the swipe of a finger—as easily as summoning an Uber.

But the vision ran up against the reality of stovepiped command and control and legacy IT, leaving regional commanders with little choice but to try to jerry-rig their own solutions. “Because we have not delivered [an] enterprise solution, each theater is implementing its own flavor of CJADC2,” Miyi Chung, the Defense Information Systems Agency’s technical director for the Pacific, said at an industry event earlier this year.

Indeed, Cropsey has already worked on a different common operating picture program called Cloud-Based Command and Control, which deployed to NORAD for air defense over North America back in 2023. CBC2 has since expanded and could play a role in Cropsey’s work on the Joint Fires Network.

Last year, then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced the Pentagon, in an effort to centralize management of these proliferating solutions, had made the Department of the Air Force the executive agent for JFN. Subsequently, a memo signed by the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante named PEO C3BM as the Air Force organization responsible.

But the transition process has taken months and only reached its peak this summer, when Cropsey “put a senior colonel out in San Diego representing me,” he said. The integrated program office would be “a combined Air Force, Navy, [Defense Information Systems Agency] and to some extent, Army, program office.”

The C3BM office was formed in 2022 to give clearer direction and stronger oversight to roughly 50 programs comprising a future “DAF Battle Network.”. It has expanded rapidly since its launch, from around 200 staff and an annual budget of about $250 million to thousands of employees and a multi-billion-dollar budget.

Cropsey said the IPO stand-up would top a list of programs that the his office had absorbed over the past year:

C2ISR, that provides connectivity for the Air Force’s intelligence products

The iconic Kessel Run team, building a new operating system for Air Operation Centers

The airspace mission planning team that manages the actual execution of air tasking orders, ensuring that the pilot, the airplane, the munitions, the correct fuel load, all know where they’re going and where they need to be.

The aerial networks division that manages tactical data links and provides the “last mile” connectivity to the cockpit.

“We have, at this point, inside of at least the Air Force, …all the [command and control procurement] in one place,” Cropsey said.

Air Force: Twice-a-Year PT Tests, 2-Mile Runs Coming in 2026

Sept. 24, 2025 | By David Roza

After months of speculation, the Air Force confirmed on Sept. 24 that next year Airmen will begin taking physical fitness assessments every six months, including a two-mile run test every year.

The Air Force will pause physical fitness testing starting Jan. 1, 2026, then hold a diagnostic period from March 1 to Aug. 31 where Airmen can try out the new test, called the PFA, without it counting on their records. Official, scored testing with the new PFA begins Sept. 1, 2026.

The PFA has four components:

A two-mile run, which tests the Airman’s cardiorespiratory fitness and counts for 50 percent of the total score. The run is up from the 1.5-mile run in past tests

Push-ups or hand-release push-ups completed in one minute. Hand-release push-ups require Airmen lower their chest all the way to the ground and extend their hands out to the sides before pushing up again. This component measures muscle strength and counts for 15 percent of the total score.

Sit-ups or reverse cross leg crunches completed in one minute or forearm plank, which measures muscle core endurance and counts for another 15 percent of the total score.

A body composition test where Airmen divide their waist length by their height in inches. For example, an Airman who stands 69 inches tall and has a waist of 36 inches would have a waist-to-height ratio of 0.52. This component counts for 20 percent of the total score, but Airmen do not have to take the body composition test the same day as the workout portion of the PFA.

“These fitness changes are about having a healthy, ready force prepared to meet today’s mission and the demands of the future fight,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a press release. “The updated model reflects our high standards for fitness and ensures our Airmen have the tools they need to protect their long-term health.”

Airmen must take a cardiorespiratory assessment at both PFAs each year, but only one of those assessments has to be the two-mile run, an Air Force spokesperson said. For the other PFA, an Airman can choose to do either the two-mile run or the 20-meter High Aerobic Multi-Shuttle Run, where participants dash between lines 20 meters apart at progressively faster pace.

The four components of the PFA will be weighed differently than they were in the past, an Air Force spokesperson explained. Today, cardio counts for 60 percent of the test, while the muscle strength and endurance portion accounts for 20 percent each.

In the past, when the body composition component was still scored as part of the physical fitness test, it was 60 percent cardio, 20 percent body composition, 10 percent muscle strength, 10 percent muscle endurance.

The new PFA ratios of 50 percent cardio, 20 percent body composition, 15 percent muscle strength, 15 percent muscle endurance better emphasizes that each part of the PFA is important, the spokesperson said.

As in the current version of the test, Airmen can’t squeak by just doing the minimum of each category, since that will not add up to the minimum passing score of 75 points. The new scoring charts can be found here.

New Air Force PT Charts Download

Medical experts say waist-to-height ratio is a leading indicator of possible future heart health issues. It is technically possible to fail the body composition measurement and pass the PFA overall, but an Airman would have to max out the other portions of the PFA.

The Air Force removed the body composition measurement from the physical fitness test amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Since then, Airmen had their body composition measurements taken during their birth month or during their annual physical.

In the new PFA, the Air Force will score body composition as part of the physical fitness test again, but Airmen do not have to take it the same day as their fitness test. In 2019, officials noticed holding both events on the same day sometimes led to Airmen starving themselves or taking diuretics to make the tape, a potentially dangerous decision when combined with physical training.

The new measurement lets Airmen take the body composition measurement up to five days before the fitness test so that they can still fuel up for the workout portion of the PFA without fear that it may hurt their waist measurement. Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard members may complete their body composition measurement during their drill period prior to their PFA. Airmen can still take the body composition measure the same day as the rest of the PFA if they want.

Base commanders can direct units to do mass PFA testing in cycles so it best fits local conditions and ops tempo.

Airmen have a guide to prepare for the new PFA–and staying fit in general–with the Warfighter’s Fitness Playbook, which provides tips and guidance for sleep, diet, exercise, and other aspects of staying healthy.

The PFA and the playbook are one part of a larger “Culture of Fitness” push announced by Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Sept. 18. It has four lines of efforts:

Proactively managing physical and mental health so Airmen and Guardians can do their jobs and deploy

Promoting a fitness culture by encouraging units to do PT together

Improving Air Force dining facilities to be more nutritious

Using data to make more effective training and fitness assessments that better reflect operational demands.

The announcements come about six months after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a military-wide review of physical fitness, body composition and grooming standards on March, though the Air Force had been rethinking such standards for years already.

The Air Force is not the only service revisiting its physical fitness assessments. On June 1, the Army officially adopted the Army Fitness Test, where Soldiers in combat jobs must pass a higher, sex-neutral standard, while those in non-combat jobs must meet lower minimum scores that are separate for men and women.

The new Air Force test will have different standards for Airmen of different sexes and age groups, while certain career fields such as special warfare and explosive ordnance disposal will maintain their own unique physical fitness standards.

Air Force Grapples with Limitations of AI

Sept. 23, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Now that the Air Force is starting to deploy artificial intelligence operationally, service leaders are grappling with AI’s limitations—not just what it can and cannot do, but the extensive data and technical and human infrastructure it needs to work.

That was the takeaway from industry experts and senior officers at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept 23.

At a recent experiment staged by the Advanced Battle Management System Cross-Functional Team, for example, vendors and Air Force coders used AI to do the work of “match effectors”—deciding which platforms and weapons systems should be used against a particular target and generating Courses of Action, or COAs, to achieve a military objective.

An AI algorithm was able to generate a COA in 10 seconds, compared to 16 minutes for a human, but “they weren’t necessarily completely viable COAs,” said Maj. Gen. Robert Claude, Space Force representative to the ABMS Cross-Functional Team.

“While [the AI] was much more timely and there were more COAs generated,” some did not take all necessary factors into account; for instance, proposing the use of infrared-guided weapons when the weather was cloudy, Claude told reporters.

“We’re getting faster results and we’re getting more results, but there’s still going to have to be a human in the loop for the foreseeable future to make sure that, yes, it’s a viable COA or no, we need just a little bit more of this to make the COA viable,” he explained.

The tendency of generative AI to “hallucinate,” or invent answers, is well understood, but other forms of AI have problems too, explained David Ware, a partner at consulting firm McKinsey, who moderated a panel on data and AI for decision superiority.

“Generative AI uniquely has a hallucination problem, but all AI models have problems with accuracy and bias,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a brief interview following the panel.

For instance, if a model meant to do targeting is trained on historic information, its decision-making could be flawed. “It’ll be biased towards that prior information. It’ll still have an accuracy issue that I have to overcome,” Ware said.

Such limitations make it essential to carefully fence off AI systems during deployment, added Ryan Tseng, president, cofounder, and chief strategy officer for Shield AI, a startup that develops AI and autonomous technology for the U.S. military and its allies.

In an aircraft, for example, flight and other critical systems “that don’t necessarily need the creativity and very wide scope thinking of [a Large Language Model], should be segmented off, with the LLMs and very complex autonomy in another part of the system,” Tseng said.

Such a segmented technical architecture “helps keep the AI in a box, so to speak. It’s … bounding the downsides of what can happen,” he said.

Limiting the scope of what is expected from AI, at least initially, is another strategy for dealing with its limitations, said Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the program executive officer for command, control, communications, and battle management (C3BM).

C3BM launched in 2022 to bring roughly 50 programs comprising a future air and space “battle network” under one roof for clearer direction and stronger oversight.

Restricted uses of AI will allow human operators to second-guess the systems, Cropsey said, forming a kind of safety net.

With such narrow use cases, “we can still have a fairly good intuition at an operational level what the results should look like,” and check the work of the AI, Cropsey explained.

“There is, I think, a sweet point between the complexity of the space that you’re operating in, the human mind’s ability to correlate the inputs to the outputs, and the trust that we have, or don’t have, towards the model that’s generating those outputs.”

The flaws and failings of AI models aren’t the only limitations Air Force leaders are wrestling with, Cropsey said: “One of my biggest challenges is the underlying infrastructure that actually makes it all work.”

“I have literally independently owned and operated [technology] stacks all over the place,” Cropsey added, explaining that incompatible data formats and other interoperability issues were among his toughest problems. His most important work “is not glamorous at all,” Cropsey told the panel, “It’s just the hard work of figuring out, how do you get the right infrastructure where you need it?”

“Fundamental to the actual execution is the scalability problem,” agreed new Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force for warfighter communications and cyber systems Maj. Gen. Michele Edmondson.

Infrastructure doesn’t just mean hardware or fiber, explained Ware. “It’s all of the above: hardware and software and everything else that have to be layered on top of each other. … It’s less lacking the bare metal, although that is an issue in certain cases, particularly in those edge AI use cases,” where AI, which requires the highest powered computer chips, is deployed in front line environments.

Most of the time, he added, “it’s that they need to have systems that can support all the data and all the tools being in the right place to do the development.” Because of classification issues and interoperability problems between different vendors’ equipment or proprietary data formats, “that’s hard in the classified and vendor environment that exists in the DOD,” he said.

Personnel numbers are also an issue, said Edmondson. “We need more people with the right skill sets … We’ve stood up a new data analytics career field, which I think is great, but that is a very small core subset of human beings. We need more people that can help us.”

The Air Force, she argued, needs to do more to take advantage of the native skills of young Airmen now joining up who are “digitally literate from the time they were born. We have got to capitalize on that, and we have got to upscale them throughout their career, so that we continue to build on the skills they will bring with them.”

Data is another chokepoint, especially at the edge, said Edmondson. “We really struggle, I think, with data integrity and being able to integrate more data. We’ve got to be able to share and aggregate data.”

What USAF and Industry Leaders Say Are the Keys to Future Airpower

Sept. 23, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Winning future wars will require air dominance achieved through a blend of stealth, numbers, spectrum warfare, and an ability to swiftly adapt, Air Force and industry experts said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

And all of that depends on enough resources to do the job, said Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, head of Air Force Futures.

“Fiscal constraints don’t change what it takes to win, so we’ve got to be clear-eyed on that,” Kunkel said during a panel discussion Sept. 23. History shows that “if you want to win the fight … you’re going to win it in the air domain with support from space.”

If the Air Force explains in a “coherent warfighting story” to its joint partners how it can help everyone win, “there will be an infusion of cash in the Air Force,” Kunkel said. “If the strategy has changed, the resources have got to follow.”

CCA

Collaborative Combat Aircraft—the semi-autonomous escorts to crewed fighters—will deliver some of the needed “affordable mass” to prevail, Kunkel said. But their other benefit, “often overlooked,” he noted, is that “in any future fight, the ability to adapt very quickly and then scale is going to be important.”

CCAs will have standard digital architectures and modularity to allow for quick reactions to changes in the way the enemy fights, Kunkel said. They will also be inexpensive enough to be produceable in needed quantities, if “simplicity” and a low price point remains part of their model. He said CCAs would bring rapid adaptation and evolution, “much like we did with the Century Series” of fighters from the 1950s and 1960s.

Brig Gen. Jason D. Voorheis, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said the CCA program is being developed “with export in mind,” so that the U.S. can get even more benefits of mass from allies and partners also acquiring and operating them.

General Atomics’ YFQ-42A during a test flight Aug. 27. Courtesy of General Atomics

Stealth

Northrop Grumman has played a major role in developing stealth technologies by building the B-2, B-21, and part of the F-35. Yet Tom Jones, head of Northrop’s aerospace unit, said his company doesn’t use the term “stealth” anymore, having moved on to “survivability.”

“When I get in these philosophical discussions about the future of stealth, I try to remind people [that] the history of warfare has always been about measure, countermeasure, counter-countermeasure,” he said. “And stealth is exactly the same way.”

The technology in the B-2 bomber is 50 years old, Jones said, “which is just incredible, that a system designed that far back in time can still perform.”

Rather than stealth, Northrop talks about survivability because “it is not a static thing. It is a layered set of technologies and operational aspects. … It is not about being invisible. It’s about disrupting enemy kill chains, which can be done through signature management” and electronic warfare.

To keep evolving in survivability, Northrop has to stay “very close with our development customers and our operational customers [so] we understand where the threat’s going,” Jones said. It’s also necessary to invest “proactively and aggressively” in new materials, software, and flight controls.

On the investment front, Jones said Northrop now has “incredibly accurate models” for predicting how stealthy a material or technique will be. The experimental results “look like carbon copies” of the theoretical predictions.

Spectrum Warfare

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Krumm, vice president for business development with BAE Systems, said “everything has changed” about the use of the electromagnetic spectrum in the last 30 years. Back then, the Air Force was very good at offense and defense in electronic warfare, but “the part we were so good at was kind of small.”

Now, “modern technology has opened up that electromagnetic spectrum” so that every element of the kill chain can exploit any part of it. As a result, the Air Force must both attack and defend within and across the spectrum at the same time. “That’s a really complicated task,” Krumm said.

The Air Force is buying a new electronic attack jet in the EA-37B, but the new Compass Call won’t erase the fact that “almost every single [system] is going to have to either be supported or have this onboard support of electronic warfare”, Krumm said.

Panelists agreed that connectivity within the force will be crucial, especially to maintain control of a large CCA fleet. But Kunkel said it will also be necessary that sixth-generation aircraft like the F-47 and B-21 have “both the long range kill chain and an organic kill chain”—if needed, they can make their own way to the target without the help of the whole air combat enterprise.

Such a capability is important because an adversary like China will try to jam and disrupt U.S. command and control.

“There will be times when long range kill chains are down and you’re still going to want to be able to take the fight to the adversary,” he said, “I think we need to think about how we integrate long range kill chains and organic kill chains.”

He predicted that pilots of those aircraft will eventually be given the means to switch as seamlessly between the enterprise system and their own system as easily as switching between guns and missiles on a control stick.

“We are looking at affordable long-range weapons, all right, and they’ll be a part of this mix. But we’ve also got to realize that the kill chains are going to be more difficult, and if you can unlock the arsenal of direct attack weapons, you’re going to find yourself in a place where you can attack the adversary more frequently,” Kunkel said.

Space Force Wants to Maneuver in Orbit. The Question Is How

Sept. 23, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Pentagon and industry officials have discussed dynamic space operations with frequently satellite maneuvers for years. But with China’s advances in space, the urgency for figuring out how to make that possible is growing.

Maj. Gen. Dennis O. Bythewood, special assistant to the Chief of Space Operations, says a detailed analysis of dynamic space operations is now underway.

“We’re kicking off that work to really get past the ‘Hey, this is a good thing’ to specifically, ‘What are we looking at for advantage? How would we architect in order to deliver that advantage? And what are the implications of that on future force structure for the Space Force?’” Bythewood said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference here Sept. 23.

U.S. Space Command leaders have been clear that they want to maneuver “without regret,” eliminating the fuel conservation constraints that currently minimize such operations in orbit. Expending as little fuel as possible is today the only way to preserve the service life of a satellite.

Some companies have developed concepts for refueling satellites or launching spacecraft that latch onto existing satellites essentially act as jetpacks, maneuvering them once their fuel is spent. Rob Hauge, president of Northrop Grumman’s Space Logistics subsidiary, said his firm has not only deployed “Mission Extension Vehicles,” but is already working on a “next-generation servicer.”

China may be ahead here, having invested in satellite refueling. It conducted a refueling operation this summer in geosynchronous orbit, moving fuel from one satellite to another. At another panel discussion at the conference, Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch, senior enlisted advisor to the Space Force’s top intelligence officer, called that work a “game-changer” for China, which does not have the same launch capacity and capability as the U.S.

Bythewood, for his part, said he wasn’t surprised to see China’s demonstration.

“Our adversaries are moving forward with capability to threaten us in the domain and the ability to protect themselves in that domain,” he said. “What we see here is another step along that way. Movement and maneuver … is inherent to military operations in any domain, so the idea that China would be looking to enhance its ability to conduct movement and maneuver in the domain, it’s expected.”

How exactly the U.S. might counter is less clear. The Space Force has funded refueling demonstrations scheduled for 2026 and 2028, but the service hasn’t committed to more beyond that. Bythewood noted that refueling is only one option; another is simply to replace satellites in orbit more rapidly. SpaceX’s reusable rockets, a technology China has not replicated, has driven down the cost of launch, which might make it less costly to simply replace satellites rather than refuel them.

Hague said not all space maneuvers are equal. “Dynamic space operations” are “like a fighter capability, the ability to maneuver very quickly to defend or engage,” but one could also pursue “reactive space operations,” or the ability for large satellites to “get off their node very quickly, to be reactive to a threat, and then get right back for the mission.”

Bythewood hinted that the Space Force is open to refueling for certain satellites.

“In some cases, the answer is, ‘I’m going to extend a mission that’s largely static or needs a new payload or an upgrade.’ Other missions are inherently driven by maneuver,” he said. “So life extension for a high-maneuvering spacecraft, where a maneuver is core to its job, is refueling.”

The most high-profile maneuvering satellites in the Space Force’s fleet are in the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, which consists of “neighborhood watch” birds that travel through GEO examining objects and threats.

GSSAP satellites are not known to be refuelable and the Space Force is starting to think about replacements: USSF hosted its first industry day for the Geosynchronous Reconnaissance & Surveillance Constellation, or RG-XX, in August.

Details remain sparse, but Monty Greer, a senior project leader at the Aerospace Corporation, argued in favor of making a refuelable solution.

“What I would plant the seed for is: How do we make that the first opportunity to have a serviceable geosynchronous space domain awareness platform that relies on being able to maneuver to do its mission?” he asked. “It’s not just life extension. Can we do that as the first instance of a program of record that demonstrates that capability?”

If the Space Force does decide to go that way, it may need to act relatively quickly, Hauge suggested.

“If we really want to embrace [refueling], the time is now to start modernizing our fleet,” he said. “It typically takes three to five years to build a spacecraft. Putting a refueling port on that spacecraft if the first step.”

WATCH: The ‘Zero-G Helmet’ Revolutionizes Fighter Pilot Displays

Sept. 23, 2025

Air & Space Forces Magazine Editor-in-Chief Tobias Naegele visited Elbit America’s exhibit at AFA’s 2025 Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md., to explore the next evolution in helmet-mounted display technology: the Zero-G Helmet.

Jeff Hoberg, Elbit America’s Senior Director, breaks down the revolutionary helmet’s digital waveguide design and how Elbit America purpose-built it for sixth-generation combat aircraft. Offering high-resolution color displays, wider fields of view, integrated augmented reality, and 25–30% less weight, the Zero-G Helmet enhances pilot comfort while giving aircrews the ability to process and act on massive streams of sensor data.

How F-15s Tried to Take Down Iranian Drones with Laser-Guided Bombs

Sept. 23, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—When U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles headed out to blunt Iran’s attack on Israel last year, they tried an unusual tactic: Knock Iranian drones out of the sky with laser-guided bombs.

Iran launched around 300 drones and missiles at Israel on the night of April 13, 2024 and the F-15Es fired dozens of AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-120 AMRAAMs with great effect. But the Iranian barrage included so many aimpoints that many of the fighters quickly exhausted their air-to-air missiles—a significant expenditure considering that Strike Eagles can carry up to eight AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-120 AMRAAMs.

Out of missiles and still seeing targets, the aircrews tried a new tactic, Airmen involved in the operation revealed in an interview at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. F-15Es from the 494th Fighter Squadron and the 335th Fighter Squadron were carrying laser-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs just in case the jets needed to strike a ground target.

Lt. Col. Timothy “Diesel” Causey, a weapons systems officer, explained the decision to employ bombs. “So we end up in the middle of the desert,” said Causey, now commander of the 494th Fighter Squadron. “We find another drone, and the boss just goes, ‘Diesel, what do you think?’ I was like, ‘Let’s drop a bomb.’ He was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah, brother.”

In employing the new tactic, the Airmen were taking advantage of latitude given them by then-Air Forces Central commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich—now the four-star NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

“Gen. Grynkewich gave us the intent: What did we need to do for success? He had passed down the trust in us to operate,” said Maj. Benjamin “Irish” Coffey, who on April 13 was the mission commander for the operation as a weapons systems officer with the 494th. He’s now on the 48th Fighter Wing staff.

The JDAM dropped by Causey and his front-seater, then-squadron commander, Lt. Col. Curtis “Voodoo” Culver, missed. But there was reason to think the tactic could work: An F-15E once scored an air-to-air kill by bombing an Iraqi Mi-24 Hind helicopter as it took off during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. At the start of the deployment, the squadron considered the concept.

“As we start this process in December [2023] and January [2024], we’re shooting missiles,” Causey said. “Sooner or later, somebody might find themselves in a situation where they’ve shot everything, and then what do I want them to do?”

The question weighed on Causey, the squadron’s operations director, and Coffey, its weapons officer.

U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. pic.twitter.com/xxg6F6LlqB
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) May 30, 2025

“It was really important that our young guys aren’t out in a situation that somebody hasn’t thought about and assessed the risk for them,” Causey said. “And so we had a conversation about, like, ‘Can we drop a bomb and laze it in?”

Causey said he had dropped JDAMs on moving ground targets, so he applied similar logic. “This thing, these drones, it’s near the ground, it’s low altitude, but it’s not on the ground,” he said. “It’s moving a little bit faster than the vehicles we usually train against, but it’s not moving that much faster.”

From his rear seat in the Strike Eagle, Causey lit up the drone with his targeting pod. “We just set it up, just like we would in attacking a car, and we made a few key changes to the actual procedure,” Causey said.

Seeing a large explosion, it looked for a moment like success. “So we’ve swooped in, we’ve dropped a bomb, and then now we’re lazing,” Causey said. “I mean, the bomb, it looks like it hits—big explosion. I was like, “HIT!” And then just out of this massive cloud, like in Star Wars,” he added, making noise of a projectile zipping by. “Just here comes the drone, just right out of the cloud. And I was like, ‘Oh, miss.’”

Coffey chimed in on the radio: “We’re not doing that again.”

Two other crews also tried to employ a JDAM against a drone that night: a second F-15E from the 494th and another from the 335th. “They missed further than I did—mine was the closest,” Causey quipped. “But it was worth trying, right? Because in this case, like that JDAM, they’re way less expensive than the other weapons we’re using. We have it onboard. We’ve thought about this procedure. No civilians in the area. We have the ability to try this.”

Coffey called an end to the test. “I ended up coordinating through command and control to stop doing it entirely, because my comfort with the level of risk acceptance for a miss now transcends outside of the tactical,” said Coffey. “There’s strategic implications if something happens because of a missed bomb, so we end up just knocking it off until we can verify some ways to improve it.”

Other tactics were also considered and rejected, including buzzing the drones at low altitude or relying on the F-15Es’ internal gun in anything other than exceptional circumstances.

Ultimately, the Airmen enjoyed considerable success against the Iranian weapons. All told, U.S. and allied aircraft downed some 80 drones before they reached Israel, which was important because Washington’s efforts to try to contain fighting between Iran and Israel depended on how well U.S. forces could stymie the Iranian attack. Airmen were awarded numerous medals for their actions that night.

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle takes off from an undisclosed location, Apr. 13, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo

“This 494th Fighter Squadron and the 494th Fighter Generation Squadron are working together with other units at our base to make things happen,” Causey said.

In fact, F-15Es from the 494th Fighter Squadron launched under “Alarm Red” conditions—meaning an air attack was underway and personnel should seek shelter, and there was no one in the air traffic control tower. The Air Force declined to disclose where the F-15E units were based in the region.

“The last two jets that hadn’t been launched that day are now prepped,” Causey said. “They’re basically almost at the point where they’re going to take off when they want Alarm Red hits and stuff starts blowing up. … The squadron commander, Lt. Col Culver, gets on the radio on our squadron frequency, and basically, he’s just like, ‘You will launch to survive, and you will defend this base. All aircraft in the green take off now!’ And those dudes take off, get to the end of the runway. People run out of the bunkers, maintenance comes out of the bunkers, arms the jet up, runs back to the bunkers, and then those guys take off.”

Strike Eagles from the 335th Fighter Squadron landed later under the same conditions, sequencing themselves for the landing.

“Fighter pilots want to get things done,” Causey said.

Northrop Aims to Make Beacon a ‘Playground’ for Testing Autonomy Software

Sept. 23, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Northrop Grumman is offering a revamped Model 437 aircraft as a “playground” testbed for developers of autonomy flight software, hoping to answer industry demand for more and faster testing of their technology.

Northrop announced the new testbed aircraft, dubbed Beacon, has completed its first flight at an event featuring a half-dozen other companies during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 23.

The reconfigured Model 437 flew with a pilot in the cockpit this week, said Tom Jones, the president of Northrop’s Aeronautics Systems sector. Following additional tests, Northrop’s aims to fly it using the company’s Prism autonomous flight software by the end of the year, with a pilot in the cockpit able to override the software if needed for safety.

The Air Force has expressed strong interest in autonomy, especially for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft—uncrewed, autonomously controlled jets. The service also has interested in uncrewed cargo aircraft, uncrewed refuelers, and more. Yet industry officials said they don’t have many ways to actually test and refine autonomous flight software in the real world.

“If you look at, what venues do I have as a performer in this space, as a nation, to test these things?” said Chris Gentile, general manager for tactical autonomy at Merlin Labs. “It just doesn’t exist. There has been [just one] representative CCA flight ever in the United States, just two weeks ago, and that was primarily remotely operated—not autonomous in any way.”

The Air Force is testing autonomy on converted F-16s through its VISTA and VENOM programs, but Dan Javorsek, president at EpiSci, called those efforts “completely insufficient.”

“It turns out that to develop precisely the algorithms that you’re going to take into combat with you, you need a place and a playground to go and do this,” Javorsek said.

Beacon is meant to be that playground. Northrop wants to provide startups and tech companies a certified, airworthy platform to work with, a cost-savings move compared to having each firm develop their own aircraft.

“There are very rigorous rules around airworthiness and safety certification that potentially could stand in the road of rapid innovation in the field of bringing autonomy and AI to fruition for our warfighters,” Jones said. “By being able to integrate test pilots with the solution and have the ability to always have that safeguard there, we’re able to very rapidly integrate.”

The Air Force has split the requirements for aircraft and its native flight controls from the requirement for autonomy in its CCA program. That makes Northrop’s plan to provide a testbed for the autonomy portion more viable.

Jones said the Model 437 is cheap to fly and easy to maintain, enabling a fast test tempo.

Tom Pieronek, chief technology officer under Jones, suggested Northrop will look to fly as frequently as possible, potentially even multiple times per day.

That’s big for autonomy startups that say they need to test their software early and often to figure out updates—an aggressive, flexible approach the Pentagon has struggled at times to embrace.

“You got to get the thing up and flying,” Javorsek said. “And Beacon gives us an opportunity that is really separated and has some distance from the government to do precisely that. So I think all of us are looking forward to precisely getting more reps and sets on these sorts of systems.”

Indeed, Jack Zaientz, vice president of C4I and autonomy at SoarTech, suggested that the Air Force could embrace Beacon as a way to accelerate its own progress.

“The operative goal is not, ‘Can you get something done beautifully in 10 years? … ” Zaientz said. “It’s ‘go figure it out, talk amongst yourselves.’”

Northrop’s autonomous flight software will keep the aircraft flying and is meant to be open and modular with set standards, meaning other companies will be able to load and test their autonomous mission software—the tactics, techniques, and procedures to actually execute the missions the Air Force wants to automate.

More than one company will be able to put their software on the Beacon testbed at one time, added Pieronek. The pilot will have a tablet in the cockpit from which they can press a button to run different autonomous mission software, testing different maneuvers and actions.

And because of the open architecture of Beacon, firms can make rapid updates, added Kevin Fesler, chief customer officer at Red 6.

“By being able to use open mission systems and the standards and work things like Beacon, we can literally software define something today and test it tomorrow,” Fesler said.

Jones said he anticipates eventual interest from customers in both the U.S. government and abroad in using Beacon as an autonomy testbed. But much is still unsettled.

“This is a little bit of an experiment for us,” Jones said. Northrop first introduced Model 437 through its Scaled Composites subsidiary, envisioning it as a potential “loyal wingman” or CCA. But after its first flight in August 2024, Northrop needed to decide what to do with it.

They settled on the autonomy testbed idea. Over the past nine months, Jones said, Northrop “basically redid the avionics and the power systems so that we could interface with autonomous controllers.”

Now they’re rolling out the opportunity and waiting to see what kind of market emerges. “We thought this was a good idea,” Jones said. “I still think it’s a really good idea. And we’re going to do some demonstrations. And I think this is a little bit of a ‘build it, and they will come.’”

CMSSF: ‘World Class Master Sergeants’ Coming to a Space Force Near You

Sept. 23, 2025 | By David Roza

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Space Force is too small for experienced non-commissioned officers to be anything short of elite, the top enlisted Guardian said at AFA’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference on Sept. 23.

“We need Guardians who are subject matter experts, but we also need them to teach, to train, to mentor,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna said in his keynote address. “So there is no saying ‘I will be a technical subject matter expert, I want to do operations, I don’t want to lead.’ There is no such thing. We all lead at our levels. We all have influence over others.”

To cultivate those leaders and experts, Bentivegna rolled out a new “World-Class Master Sergeants” initiative during his speech—a framework for molding junior enlisted Guardians so that by the time they reach the rank of master sergeant, or the grade of E-7, they have years of technical expertise in their specialty; a deep understanding of how the service’s operational puzzle pieces fit together; and a commitment to developing and mentoring their junior colleagues.

Why focus on master sergeants? That rank is where Guardians are at the peak of their operational game before moving into more administrative roles as senior master sergeants or chief master sergeants, or E-8s and E-9s, respectively, Bentivegna said.

“The preponderance of where the warfighting work is being done is at the master sergeant level and below,” he said in an exclusive interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine on Sept. 18. “If we focus on developing the right master sergeants, and that’s the goal of our development model, just naturally, we’ll have the right talent to create E-8s and E-9s.”

Master sergeants make up 12 percent of the 4,900-strong enlisted force, Bentivegna said. The “world-class” framework breaks down what’s expected of Guardians on their way to that rank.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna laid out a framework for ‘World Class Master Sergeants,’ which is meant to guide Guardians on their journey to what Bentivegna said is the most consequential rank in the service. Courtesy of the Space Force

The process begins during the recruitment process, which Bentivegna said is being transformed into a scouting process where the Space Force proactively seeks out talent rather than waiting for them to walk in through a recruiter’s door, he said. For guidance, the service plans to meet with Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals to see how a pro sports team scouts top talent.

Looking to baseball for inspiration is something of a national pastime for top Space Force enlisted leaders. In his final keynote address in 2023, Bentivegna’s predecessor, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger Towberman, played an extended clip from the 2011 film “Moneyball,” where a cash-strapped baseball manager uses a new approach to data to build a record-setting team out of overlooked players.

“Rather than wait for somebody to come to the Space Force, how do we go out and find the talent that we need,” Bentivegna said.

The molding continues at basic military training and tech school, where new Guardians learn the initial skills of their job specialty. Currently, enlisted Guardians go to one of three bases for tech school:

Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, for intelligence training

Keesler Air Force Base Miss., for cyber

Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., for space operations

Bentivegna envisions a combined, foundational course for all enlisted Guardians, and someday he hopes all those tech schools will come together for Guardians on one campus where they learn not only their specialty, but also train together as a crew, just like they will at their operational assignments.

“The ultimate goal is to enable Guardians to train together and ultimately fight together,” the chief said, though at this point the idea is still conceptual and no decisions regarding specific locations or basing have been made.

Beyond training together, Bentivegna wants to ensure BMT and tech school are not “a cakewalk,” so that when Guardians complete those courses, it is a meaningful moment. Whether they are entering the Space Force with a high school diploma or a master’s degree, trainees need to understand that being a Guardian is about more than just achieving technical mastery, the chief said. It is about working as a team.

For an experienced cyber professional, for example, Bentivegna said, “rather than let you skip a class, how about you share your knowledge and expertise with your teammates? I’m a little less interested in individual accomplishment, and I want to know who’s going to raise the team and make the team great.”

When asked what that might look like as a formal expectation or evaluation criteria at BMT or tech school, the chief said it was not the kind of thing that easily lends itself to checklists.

“Every organization has expectations and standards. But the goal is for each Guardian to be the best version of themselves,” he said. “You can say ‘this is the minimum,’ but to challenge yourself to be the best version of the person you can be, I think that is a different conversation.”

0125_Space_Money — Space Force Guardians with Space Delta 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., monitor the space domain 24/7. David Dozoretz/USSF

‘You’ve Proven Yourself’

Today’s enlisted Airmen expect to be promoted from Airman to Airman 1st Class to Senior Airman after a set amount of time at their current rank (known as time-in-grade) and time-in-service. But Bentivegna wants to tie the rise of Guardians through the junior enlisted ranks more to capabilities and achievement and less to “arbitrary” timelines.

“When I visit an operations floor, and I have a young E-3 who is telling me about working their midnight shift on a Saturday, and they’re executing the mission on behalf of a combatant command, I’m so impressed with the responsibilities that they have,” he said. “I’m like, why are you still an E-3? You should be an E-4. You’ve earned that right, you’ve proven yourself able to do that.”

The chief wants the same principle to apply as Guardians take their first step into the noncommissioned officer corps when promoting from the E-4 rank of Specialist 4 to the E-5 rank of Sergeant. Earlier this year, the Space Force rolled out a new E-5 promotion system where the number of E-4s selected for E-5 is limited by only the talent of the applicant pool, rather than by annual caps of how many new Sergeants can be promoted and which required candidates be scored and ranked.

The new system allows commanders to select as many qualified Guardians as they feel are ready for the responsibility, and commanders seemingly embraced the new ability, selecting 96 percent of E-4s to promote—a far larger rate than that of the Air Force. This year, a central promotion board still evaluated the candidates before selections could be made, but Bentivegna said next year will do away with the board entirely.

“We now want to give that authority and responsibility down to tactical level command teams, where commanders know what they need, performance-wise,” he said.

At this point there are no plans to expand the fully qualified promotion system to other ranks, but the ‘World-Class” framework lays out Guardians’ roles and responsibilities as they mature. Sergeants will cut their teeth in tactical operations before moving into more of an operational leadership and technical subject matter expertise role as they promote to tech sergeant and master sergeant, by which point their skills and experience should be matched by their leadership and mentorship capabilities.

Space Force Guardians assigned to the 4th Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron, Mission Delta 3, conduct training and maintenance with the Counter Communications System (CCS) at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo. (U.S. Space Force photo by Amber Mullins)

“Because of the size of the force, we are putting a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility on our E-7s, and that should be the pinnacle of a successful career in the Space Force,” John Bentivegna said. “They strive and drive to be that credible subject matter expert who is respected as a master sergeant in the thick of it, leading operations and hands-on developing our Guardians.”

“Now of course our E-8s and E-9s are doing great work,” he added, “but we decided looking at the structure and the needs of the service, that the journey to get to master sergeant is probably the best investment from an enlisted development model that we can do at this time.”

The framework may not necessarily change day-to-day life for Guardians, Bentivegna said, but it does crystallize how they will be evaluated throughout their careers. There is no single path to success, but this provides a constellation to navigate by.

“Where it will become really impactful is during those mentorship and developmental discussions, where supervisors are setting expectations and goals for their individuals, and individuals are setting their own personal goals,” he said. “It’s arming supervisors and command teams with ‘what do I talk about’ when you come to me and say, ‘I’d like some career advice, I’d like some mentorship—what do you think I should be striving for next?’”

‘Greater Empowerment’

The ‘world class’ framework comes a year after Bentivegna laid out an enlisted Guardian career path at the 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. The plan emphasized empowering qualified, responsible enlisted Guardians and keeping them on the operations floor longer in their career, rather than push them into management and backshop activities too soon and deprive the service of their technical expertise.

That emphasis was inspired in part by space operations in the Air Force, where Bentivegna observed officers performing tasks better suited for NCOs. Not so with the Space Force, which, at about 9,500 members, is less than three percent the size of the Active-duty Air Force.

“The size of the force does not allow us to follow the same type of organizational structure and force design that we used in the past,” the chief said. “What I think will be different for those sergeants, tech sergeants, and master sergeants from when I came up in this business will be much more ownership, much more responsibility on the day-to-day execution of the mission, and greater empowerment than I had.”

But the top levels of Space Force leadership can’t do it alone. Bentivegna called on Guardians at all levels to make the change happen.

“This is a unity of effort to build the future that we all know that we need,” he said in his keynote. “So my ask, my challenge to you is: help me with that, embrace that opportunity, embrace that responsibility, and make sure that every single Guardian knows what their experience should be like.”