Future Airmen to Get Less Sleep, More Stress in Basic Training

Future Airmen to Get Less Sleep, More Stress in Basic Training

Sept. 5, 2026 | By Matthew Cox

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas—The Air Force has started challenging new trainees with less sleep and will soon ramp up the stress level in Basic Military Training to better prepare the future Airmen for the increased strain of combat operations such as Epic Fury.

The service’s 7.5 weeks of BMT already forced Airmen to endure the high stress of constant corrections, long hours of training, and sleep periods interrupted by guard duty.

But in late August, BMT officials here began an effort that will force trainees to handle additional sleep deprivation by increasing the frequency of nocturnal training. In the coming weeks, officials hope to add “stress inoculation” to the effort that’s designed to increase training stress but also teach trainees techniques to function more effectively under it, Col. Kellie Courtland, commander of the 37th Training Wing that oversees BMT, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach directed BMT officials to make the new training changes after combat operations—such as the recent air campaign against Iran—showed that some young Airmen struggled under the strain of the increased operational pace, Courtland added.

The Air Force is “realizing that there are people that are not responding to being able to perform well when they’re sleep deprived, or there’s a lot of stress, … or hard events happen; they’re having a hard time recovering from that,” Courtland said. “The idea is to practice that a little bit more and get used to that level of stress and sleep deprivation because it’s going to happen at different points throughout your career but definitely when you’re out in those wartime environments.”

This is the latest change in a larger effort to overhaul BMT to instill a mindset of “airmindedness” in all Airmen to ensure they know how to work in small teams to defend, operate, generate, and sustain airpower. 

Less Sleep

The first week of BMT will remain unchanged since new trainees are already “sleep deprived” from the complete culture shock of the new environment, Courtland said. Beginning in week two, military training instructors, or MTIs, will increase the amount of nighttime entry-control procedures, or guard duty, that each 60-member flight must share. In the past, shifts were two hours long. Now they are one hour each, which requires more trainees to be up on any given night.

Before “you would only have four to eight people basically getting woken up during the night that would do their entry control procedures,” Courtland said. “Now you’ve got 21 trainees that have to get up, spend an hour doing entry control procedures.”

On top of guard shifts, more nighttime training activities are added in the fourth and fifth week in the lead up to PACER FORGE, the final field training exercise that stresses trainees’ agile combat employment skills.

In the fourth week, “we will do different exercises, like maybe an accountability exercise,” said 37th Training Wing Command Chief Master Sgt. Caleb Vaden, describing how all trainees fall out of the dorm, so leaders can ensure everyone is present.

“That usually takes about an hour, and they’ll fall back into their sleeping area,” Vaden said. “Everything we do here is tied to a training objective.”

During the fifth week, trainees will see more nocturnal training events as they begin to prepare for PACER FORGE, where trainees traditionally get little sleep during the 57-hour training event, Vaden said.

“We are working on an exercise where they would fall out, work on that F-16, fall under attack, have to go to a bunker, and then they’re going to go forward to their forward site,” Vaden said. “So essentially, they’re getting additional sleep deprivation before they even get to the PACER FORGE site. We’re getting them up early, keeping them up, not letting them sleep very much. … it just keeps amping up as you get closer and closer to PACER FORGE.

More Stress

The plan to prepare trainees to endure more stress effectively is still under review, Courtland said, but the idea is to not only introduce more stress into training activities but also teach trainees techniques for recognizing and coping with extreme pressure.

“It’s more understanding how you work through stress when you are stressed out,” Courtland said. “The idea is they get stressed out more here. It’s intense. They get that stress, but then we are walking them through it— ‘hey, you probably felt really stressed in that moment, here’s something you could have done, or here’s something that may have helped.’”

For example, trainees may be taught to use box breathing, a technique that uses equal counts of inhaling, holding, exhaling, and pausing to calm the nervous system, said Courtland, who would not discuss the list of techniques that is currently under review. If all goes well, the new stress portion of training could be approved by the end of September, she added.

“At the same time that we’re teaching them how to deal with stress, we are going to be turning up the stress and turning up the intensity,” she said.

MTIs will use regular after-action reviews of training events to ensure trainees understand how the increased stress affected their performance, Vaden said.

“I will more than likely see degradation in teamwork. I’ll see degradation in leadership. I’ll see degradation in situational awareness; I’ll see degradation in a lot of things,” Vaden said. “We’re just going to use those performance measures when we’re assessing.”

Courtland added that the success of the effort will involve seeing if trainees use the new stress techniques under increased pressure. “The goal is to teach them the tools, stress the hell out of them, and see if they know how to use the tools correctly.”

In other changes to BMT, training officials have partially completed a portion of the new air base training range that includes a non-flying F-16 Fighting Falcon. Trainees have begun learning and practicing how to re-arm the fighter with mock AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and other training munitions that mock Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rockets. The new air base training range will soon include two retired C-130 Hercules aircraft which arrived here in August.

Air Force Speeding Up New Low-Cost Drone Program after Heavy MQ-9 Losses Against Iran

Air Force Speeding Up New Low-Cost Drone Program after Heavy MQ-9 Losses Against Iran

Sept. 4, 2026 | By Stephen Losey

The Air Force is accelerating its plans to field an MQ-9A replacement in the wake of heavy Reaper losses in operations against Iran, top officials said Sept. 3, and they’re targeting a price point of just $10 million per aircraft.

Back in July, the Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit announced plans to develop a low-cost drone to do all the missions that an MQ-9 can do today, and when necessary fly in groups to overwhelm an enemy’s anti-drone capabilities and force them to expend large numbers of munitions. They called the effort Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA.

At the time, officials said they wanted to have a prototype to test fly within 21 months of a contract, and then 20 mission-ready aircraft by fiscal 2031 to achieve initial operating capability.

Now, though, officials are targeting a more ambitious timeline. During a media roundtable at the Pentagon, DIU military deputy Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel said the MMA program will try to follow DIU’s typical timeframe of prototyping a system within a year of a contract, and then fielding it at scale within three years—as soon as 2029.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the Air Force’s new chief modernization officer, said those goals changed “fairly recently,” when Air Force Secretary Troy Meink “called us in and said ‘You need to move faster.’” 

That urgency, Niemi acknowledged, came at least partly in response to the significant losses the MQ-9 fleet has taken in the past year or so during operations against Iran and Iranian-backed militias. Since the start of the Iran war, the Air Force has lost at least 45 MQ-9s, roughly a quarter of its fleet. The service was already thinking about what it needed to succeed the MQ-9 as a medium-altitude intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platform, but Niemi said the combat losses pushed it to move faster.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Niemi said. 

Replacing, Not Reinventing, the MQ-9

The MQ-9 has long been a workhorse of the Air Force fleet, valued by combatant commanders for its long endurance, loitering ability, and ability to combine strike and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach called the Reaper the “most valuable player” of Operation Epic Fury in a May congressional hearing.

Unsurprisingly, then, officials said they were eager to replace the ones lost in combat. Niemi said the Air Force has “spent a lot of time and energy” in recent months trying to figure out how to do so and found “there’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

The Air Force considered General Atomics’ MQ-9B, a larger and more complex—and more expensive—version of the MQ-9A, Niemi said. Ultimately, officials concluded the MQ-9B was not the right choice because the Air Force needed something more “attritable,” or inexpensive enough to be fielded in large numbers and easily replaced if lost in combat.

“If you don’t like losing an MQ-9A that cost on the order of $50 million, with the sensors, you’re probably not going to like losing an MQ-9B at a higher price point,” Niemi said.

For that reason, the Air Force decided to go all-in on the MMA concept. The Air Force plans to field at least 180 of the drones, Niemi said, but probably more than that.

In order to move fast and keep costs down, Niemi said the Air Force plans to “accept prudent risk” on the MMA program. Kunkel also said the Air Force wants “significantly increased levels of competition” to keep costs down.

As the Air Force wrote out what attributes MMA drones would need, Niemi added, it tried to allow as much flexibility as possible and not include hyper-specific requirements that “push technology to the very edge.” 

“When that happens, you’re going to pay a lot for it, because it’s hard to do,” Niemi said. “It takes a lot of engineering, cutting-edge science, emergent technologies, things like that. So we’re trying to be more aligned with sort of an ‘80 percent is good enough,’ [using] mature technologies” approach.

That means MMA won’t have the latest and greatest flight control systems, engines, or manufacturing processes, he said—and they’ll actually resemble the MQ-9 in some key ways: they’ll likely have long-aspect wings and will likely be powered by turboprop engines. 

One way officials are looking to differ from the MQ-9, though, are higher levels of autonomy and automation than the MQ-9A has today, Niemi said—“more mouse clicks and keyboard strokes instead of a stick and throttle.” That will reduce the number of Airmen needed to operate MMA drones and allow a single Airman to operate multiple drones simultaneously.

At the same time, Niemi said MMAs won’t have the same level of autonomy as the Air Force’s flagship autonomous drone program, Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

“It’s not going out and autonomously finding targets and employing weapons,” Niemi said of the MMA drone. “It’s more like a truck that’s carrying packages, whether it’s a sensor package or whether it’s a weapon, to a point where it can be employed.”

CCAs and MMAs

While CCAs and MMAs will both be unmanned and have some kind of autonomy software, Niemi was quick to note there will be major differences between the two.

“They’re going to look very different,” Niemi said. The MMA is “going to look like an MQ-9, and [CCA is] going to look more like a fighter, like you’ve seen in the current too CCAs that we’re flying.”

The Air Force wants MMA drones to be able to fly about 4,000 miles—more than twice the expected range of autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones—and carry a heavy payload, although they will be slower than CCAs, Niemi said.

Those differences extend to price, too—while the Air Force is targeting $10 million for an MMA drone, it’s hoping for $20 million per CCA once they reach full production. Those costs are for just the base aircraft, excluding sensors, weapons or other equipment that might be loaded onto them.

From an acquisition perspective, the Air Force is hoping to use the same methods across the CCA and MMA programs to keep costs down and production simple.

That includes moving quickly to award contracts and keeping several vendors on contract to provide a variety of drones. Like CCAs, MMA drones will also use open architecture, Niemi said. That will ensure the drones have standardized interfaces and could be easily upgraded with newer sensor packages or weapons capabilities, even from different vendors, he said. This would also allow MMAs to be tailored with the gear needed for a particular mission.

“If you want to build a package that’s going to go on this new aircraft, as long as it conforms to this [standardized interface], we can do it very speedily and very readily,” Niemi said. “That’s something we struggle with at the opposite end of the spectrum, something like the F-35, where it’s very very hard to incorporate new things onto it, because of the construct and the architecture of that system.”

The Air Force also wants manufacturers to be able to produce MMA drones in large numbers, Niemi said, but also be able to ramp production up or down as needed, such as if the Air Force started losing large numbers in a heated conflict. Keeping MMAs simple is the best way to ensure that production flexibility, he said.

“If you wanted to suddenly ramp up production of something like an F-35, it’s not a limiting factor so much as money, as the ability to build out your production capacity and actually crank more of those things out,” Niemi said. “And the more complex the aircraft, the harder that problem is. … In major combat operations, depending on who you’re fighting, we could be losing dozens [of MMA drones] a day, and so you have to figure out how do you adjust the industrial capacity in order to make [necessary production levels] happen.”

General Atomics, which also makes the MQ-9, is planning to pitch a newly designed drone it calls Wildfire for the MMA program.

“Our new Wildfire aircraft addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation,” General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley said in a statement to reporters. “We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank.”

Fresh US Fighter Jets Rotate into Middle East as Trump Tries to Up Pressure on Iran

Fresh US Fighter Jets Rotate into Middle East as Trump Tries to Up Pressure on Iran

Sept. 4, 2026 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. is rotating fresh fighter squadrons to the Middle East to support the Trump administration’s open-ended pressure campaign against Iran.

The move will free up units that have been based in the region far beyond the Air Force’s usual six-month deployments. More fighter unit rotations are expected in the coming weeks.

Units on their way home include the 158th Fighter Wing of the Vermont Air National Guard, which flies F-35 Lightning II aircraft. F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 555th Fighter Squadron based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, are also returning, according to people familiar with the matter and data collected by the open-source research group the Military Air Tracking Alliance. 

The departing units have been deployed overseas since last year. The Vermont F-35s first deployed to Puerto Rico in December 2025 and supported the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, before deploying to the Middle East ahead of the U.S. air war against Iran. The Vermont ANG’s F-35s were spotted transiting through RAF Lakenheath, U.K., on their way back home. The F-16s from the 555th Fighter Squadron had been deployed to the Middle East since November.

Arriving in CENTCOM are F-16s from the Ohio Air National Guard’s 180th Fighter Wing. Twelve F-16s from the Ohio ANG departed Lajes in the Azores on Sept. 4, according to local aircraft spotters. The planes, which arrived on the Portuguese island on Aug. 29, are due to head to the Middle East.

Other units likely to deploy in the coming weeks include the 115th Fighter Wing of Wisconsin Air National Guard, which flies F-35s, sources said.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command did not respond to a request for comment.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last month that the U.S. is stepping up its economic sanctions campaign to try to stop Iran from interfering with oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz while pressing Tehran to make concessions on its nuclear program. That is in addition to the ongoing American maritime blockade. 

“If we are doing the maximum economic pressure, then that means that likely there will not be a large-scale kinetic restart,” Bessent told CNBC last month. 

But U.S. officials also say that the increased economic pressure might lead Iran to retaliate militarily. Fighting in the region flared up late last month when the U.S. struck Iranian launchers that were preparing to launch rockets with mines into the strait, and Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles at American forces in Jordan. 

The new U.S. pressure campaign is likely to reduce the need for defensive and offensive munitions in the near term. But it still requires an ongoing military presence in the region and efforts to manage operational demands on the force. 

The USS Abraham Lincoln docked in Thailand earlier this week after spending nine months at sea. The Lincoln took part in Operation Epic Fury—which officially lasted from Feb. 28 to early April—and then helped enforce a U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports and partook in tit-for-tat clashes against the Iranians for months.

Dozens of Air Force and Navy fighter jets remain deployed to the Middle East.

Space Force May Export Launch Lessons to Foreign Partners

Space Force May Export Launch Lessons to Foreign Partners

Sept. 4, 2026 | By Courtney Albon

As U.S. allies look to establish sovereign military space launch capabilities, the Space Force is exploring ways to transfer lessons learned from its National Security Space Launch program to support its international partners.

In a new notice to industry, issued Sept. 3, the service said it is exploring a specific type of foreign military sales agreement called a technical service case, which involves the U.S. sharing specialized expertise with a foreign partner. The Space Force did not name which country it’s working with but said the nation is interested in acquiring engineering, logistical, and technical assistance to establish their own NSSL-like service using a U.S. commercial launch vehicle, including the spaceport infrastructure to enable it.

The U.S. is the global leader in space launch, conducting nearly 60 percent of all launches worldwide in 2025, according to analytics and engineering firm BryceTech. The Space Force operates the two busiest U.S. ranges: Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., and Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. Last year, the two spaceports supported 175 launches, and the White House is targeting 1,000 U.S. launches annually by 2030.

Amid a push from President Donald Trump’s administration for U.S. allies to increase annual spending on defense, some partner nations have announced increases in military space funding—both for space systems and for launch capabilities. In Europe, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy have all funded domestic rocket development. Meanwhile, in April, Canadian lawmakers proposed a regulatory framework for the country to establish its own space launch capabilities after long relying on the U.S. and other countries to reach orbit.

“In a more uncertain and competitive world, Canada cannot rely on others to secure access to space for our economy, our defense, and our future,” Canadian Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon, who introduced the Canadian Space Launch Act, said in an April 21 statement. “Establishing Canadian sovereign space launch capabilities would drive billions in investments, create good paying jobs, increase Canada’s sovereignty, reduce our economy’s reliance on the United States, and support a commercial space launch and re-entry industry that could be worth $40 billion.”

To support the FMS request, the Space Force is looking to select a contractor to help tailor U.S. best practices in launch and spaceport operations for the country’s specific requirements, and evaluate whether certain commercial launch vehicles and spaceport operators are a good fit for its needs. The contractor will also recommend a mission assurance approach for the country, based on its needs. The company will work with Space Systems Command’s portfolio acquisition executive for space access to compile data and craft a report on its findings.

The Space Force expects to award a contract by Sept. 25 and compile the report within 12 months.

As USSF helps its partners grow their sovereign launch capabilities, it’s also considering options to launch its own payloads from foreign soil. While this effort doesn’t address that, officials have said there could be opportunities to partner with Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and countries in Europe, but there are U.S. policy hurdles that need to be addressed first.

Guard F-16s Kept Pace on Kadena Deployment, but Edge Wears Thin

Guard F-16s Kept Pace on Kadena Deployment, but Edge Wears Thin

Sept. 4, 2026 | By Todd South

An F-16 Air National Guard unit’s six-month deployment to Kadena Air Base, Japan, this year illustrated the capabilities the Guard’s oldest fighter units can still offer—but also the challenges they face, officials told reporters this week.

On one hand, leaders said the Colorado ANG’s 120th Fighter Squadron was largely able to keep pace with its fifth-generation teammates and hone its Agile Combat Employment skills throughout the Pacific.

But on the other, the squadron’s 1980s-era F-16s are starting to show their age and lack at least some of the high-end capabilities the Air Force has said it wants to prioritize for a high-end fight.

“We’re able to keep up, with the exception of obviously being a fourth‑gen airplane,” Lt. Col. Frank “Chester” Prokop, squadron commander and detachment commander during the deployment, said. “We can’t get nearly as close to surface‑to‑air threats or air‑to‑air threats posed by China over there as some of the newer models. So, we’re kind of getting to the end of our capability. We’ve maxed it out. We played the perfect game.”

The January-to-June deployment, part of a rotation of fighters through Kadena as the base waits for its new F-15EX Eagle IIs, is a signpost of things to come for both the Air Force’s total fighter fleet, but more specifically for challenges faced inside the Air National Guard. The fleet is getting older while replacements are slowly ordered and delivered, and with the Active-Duty force being prioritized, the Guard is pushing the envelope with its legacy aircraft.

“The first piece is that any aging airframe is going to negatively impact operational availability and daily ops tempo,” Heather Penney, a former F-16 fighter pilot who now serves as the director of studies and research at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “I mean, you could talk about taking your 35‑year‑old car to an F1 race. Is that really what you want to do?”

An Air Force F-16C Fighting Falcon assigned to the 120th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, deployed to Kadena Air Base, conducts aerial refueling operations with a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 909th Air Refueling Squadron over the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 29, 2026. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Gary Hilton

Six Months at Kadena

Originally, the 120th was supposed to deploy a dozen of its F-16C Block 30 jets to Kadena from January to May. But that stay was extended six weeks due to demands across the Air Force related to Operation Epic Fury and the conflict with Iran. The conflict also impacted plans to join exercises in Thailand.

Still, the Guardsmen and their jets got to put into practice the Agile Combat Employment training they—with the rest of the Air Force—have been putting in for years now. ACE envisions small teams of Airmen dispersing from large central hubs to operate from remote or austere airfields, and the 120th implemented that through “small-package movements,” shuffling two to six jets around the region.

Prokop and 140th Wing Command Col. Christopher “KojaCk” Melka said the unit can now generate detailed ACE deployment packages, including personnel, aircraft load, and ground equipment needs, in 10-15 minutes, rather than the weeklong planning cycles common only a few years ago.

For a Philippines deployment, the squadron took four F-16s with a C-130 and worked with Marine Corps units. For Exercise Beverly Midnight at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Japan, the unit conducted hot-pit refueling and rearming work alongside F-35s.

The unit also employed the “Multi-Capable Airman” approach to shrink its maintenance manpower footprint, Melka said. Operating mostly out of Kadena, a smaller package of cross-trained airmen handled various maintenance tasks for the squadron, rather than relying on a larger footprint with specialized technicians.

“We’ve actually exposed some of our Airmen to other career fields to give them a little bit more background on both, so that if, for whatever reason, they found themselves in a more austere environment where we could only send a certain package of maintainers and support personnel, maybe one person covered the duties of two,” Melka said.

Marine Corps Cpl. Malachi Irving conducts hot pit refueling on a U.S. Air Force F-16C Fighting Falcon assigned to the 120th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron during a USAF-led operational exercise Beverly Midnight 26 at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Japan, March 11, 2026. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Francisco Huerta

Recap Ripple Effects

While the 120th was able to practice concepts like Agile Combat Employment and Multi-Capable Airmen during its deployment, the unit also had to stretch to keep its F-16s going, Melka and Prokop said.

“When these F-16s were first produced, it was roughly about six to eight maintenance man-hours per flight hour,” Prokop said. “Now, our maintainers are averaging 15 to 20 maintenance man-hours for every hour of flight.”

That’s because issues that require more in-depth maintenance, such as structural failures such as cracks on the airframe, “are happening at a much increasing rate right now,” Prokop said. “And that is probably the biggest challenge that we face is our maintenance unit has not received any increase in manpower commensurate with the level of increased requirements for maintenance time on the aircraft.”

The unit has been fortunate, the lieutenant colonel said, to have experienced, veteran maintainers working those airframes. But the increased maintenance needs are pushing leadership to make adjustments, like using more simulator flight time rather than flying hours to keep pilots sharp.

“The capacity of our maintainers to keep them safe and keep them combat effective is still working very well,” Melka said.

The jets themselves have also been upgraded many times over the years to stay effective with things like new AESA radars, Link 16 data links, and ongoing software upgrades; Prokop noted the F-16 has an unofficial nickname of the “Burger King jet” as a reference to the fast-food chain’s “Have It Your Way” slogan.

Nevertheless, the decades-old aircraft, while competent now, are closer to the end of their service lives—and the 120th is one of around a dozen Guard squadrons that have not been officially selected to recapitalize their fleets with newer aircraft such as the F-35A or F-15EX, leaving the unit’s future in doubt.

For now, Penney said, units like the 120th can keep flying their F-16s. But the Air Force has yet to signal its long-term plan for them and currently isn’t buying new jets fast enough to replace the older jets anytime soon.

“The Air Force has got to recapitalize at a meaningful rate, because they have deferred and delayed increasing their recapitalization rate,” Penney said. “If you want to be recapitalized by 2035, you’ve got to buy more than 100 fighters a year.”

Service leaders have said they need to procure at least 72 fighters per year to keep the fleet’s age from increasing. But the last time the service managed to budget for that was in fiscal 2024.

In fiscal 2025, the budget request was for 60 fighters. In 2026, it dropped to a low of 45. The fiscal 2027 request, still pending, is for just 62 fighters.

And even then, these new fighters—the F-35 and F-15EX—are mostly going to the Active-Duty force, leaving the Guard to wait. That could have a ripple effect, as the Guard deploys in nearly any major contingency or large-scale operation as a need, not an add-on, Penney said.

“If the Air Force does not recapitalize the Guard in a concurrent and proportional manner, they risk not only losing a key element of the total force, but they risk leaving the Guard with operationally irrelevant airframes,” Penney said.

USAF Tests C2 Capabilities Across 4,000 Miles in High-Stress Virtual Exercise

USAF Tests C2 Capabilities Across 4,000 Miles in High-Stress Virtual Exercise

Sept. 4, 2026 | By Todd South

The Air Force recently conducted a virtual stress test of its command-and-control capabilities, linking Air Operations Centers in New Mexico and the United Kingdom and forcing commanders to run personnel recovery and strikes under simulated fire.

Between Aug. 4-7, the 705th Combat Training Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., hosted Virtual Flag 26-4, which included more than 267 participants from the Air Force, Space Force, Army, Marine Corps, United Kingdom, and Australia.

“The foundation of joint warfighting is built in exercises like Virtual Flag,” Col. James Fields II, commander of the 505th Command and Control Wing, said in a release. “This event is where we prove that we are the Air Force’s premier organization for operational command and control.”

The 505th, headquartered at Hurlburt Field, Fla., with units scattered across the country, served as the operational “hub” for the exercise as participants trained in a distributed, contested environment using joint and coalition C2.

The exercise focused on creating “realistic friction” between the tactical and operational levels of C2, according to the release.

Another focus for the exercise was delivering a complete intelligence picture for commanders. Marine Corps Air Squadron 1 and Marine Air Control Squadron 2, both out of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C., tied together all the intel streams to provide a common tactical picture for all commanders, serving as a multifunction air operations center.

“They provided the critical expertise needed to ensure every single participant, from our pilots in the virtual simulators to our commanders in the [Air Operations Center], was looking at the exact same, accurate common tactical picture,” McCarthy said. “That shared view of the battlespace is the absolute foundation of joint C2.”

An Air Force air battle manager participates in exercise Virtual Flag 26-4 at the 705th Combat Training Squadron, also known as the Distributed Mission Operations Center, located on Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. U.S. Air Force photo by Debora Henley

Realistic Training

To provide realistic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance simulations, the exercise brought in new participants.

VF 26-4 was the first to have crews for MQ-9 Reaper drones and RC-135 Rivet Joints participate, rather than relying on traditional “white carding” of their capabilities. The exercise also simulated capabilities for the E-3 Sentry and E-7 Wedgetail for airborne early warning and control.

“In a peer conflict, identifying tracks and targets is going to require a robust ISR enterprise,” Maj. James McCarthy, director of operations for the 705th, said. “This is extremely valuable because it helps our C2 community understand what the ISR enterprise can and cannot provide in a high-tempo fight.”

The exercise practiced dispersed operations between the main base at Kirtland’s Distributed Mission Operations Center and the “forward” base, the Royal Air Battlespace Training Centre, at RAF Waddington, England, more than 4,000 miles away.

“That connectivity is important because it enables operational command and control training across geographically separated teams, helping warfighters practice the coordination, communication and decision-making required in real-world joint and coalition operations,” Lt. Col. Sajjad Abdullateef, 705th Combat Training Squadron commander, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a written statement.

The inclusion of Australian and British forces was important, retired USAF Col. George Dougherty told Air & Space Forces Magazine; most allied partners have historically let the United States take the lead in developing network architecture, tech, and standards for C2 systems.

“The U.S. was way ahead in terms of real-time battle management C2,” said Dougherty, who served as assistant to the Air Force’s program acquisition executive for command, control, communications, and battle management. “Europe/NATO was, for instance, more focused on strategic and collective ministerial-level C2, which is a bigger challenge for their collective multinational decision-making and planning.”

Airmen in exercise Virtual Flag 26-4 at the 705th Combat Training Squadron, also known as the Distributed Mission Operations Center, at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, Aug. 5, 2026. (Air Force photo by Debora Henley)

A Balancing Act

As commanders worked through their AOCs receiving simulated strikes, launching aircraft for reconnaissance and personnel recovery, they had to move units and platforms around the virtual battlespace, which affects sortie generation, sustainment, and mission planning, Abdullateef wrote.

“Commanders were required to balance survivability against mission effectiveness,” Abdullateef wrote. “They had to determine how and where to disperse forces, how to continue supporting the daily Air Tasking Order despite personnel and resource losses, and how to preserve combat power for follow-on operations.”

Operational C2 requires commanders and their staffs to translate shared understanding into timely decisions, synchronized actions, and combat effects across distributed forces, Abdullateef wrote.

“Stepping into a Wing Operations Center to manage six mission generation force elements across three simulated bases is a massive departure from our Airmen’s daily tactical routines, and Virtual Flag 26-4 provided the proving ground,” said an Air Force major serving as the exercise deputy offensive director.

“What started as an uncomfortable learning curve quickly turned into operational confidence as our team synchronized our offensive and defensive sections from home station,” the major said. “They streamlined our internal reporting, integrated real-time logistics and base defense with sortie generation, and proved our forces are ready to execute distributed command and control under contested conditions.”

Virtual Yet Real Enough

Though the virtual exercise didn’t provide live-fire experience, the simulated nature of the event gave participants experience they could not have gained in a standard, smaller-scale live-fire event.

“The virtual environment allows us to provide high-quality, high-repetition training in a fiscally responsible manner,” said Wing Commander Richard Kinniburgh, a Royal Air Force exchange officer with the 505th Test and Training Group. “More importantly, it allows us to present our warfighters with a scale of conflict that would be impossible to replicate in a live-fly exercise. We also remove many of the real-world friction points that can cancel live-fly training, ensuring our warfighters get the maximum training value out of every event.”

As this edition Virtual Flag wrapped, planners and operators pull in the lessons learned for future iterations of the exercise and to better inform the Air Force-wide C2 community.

“That matters because the value of Virtual Flag is not just executing the event,” Abdullateef wrote. “It is learning how decisions affected the broader force, identifying what worked and what required adjustment, and using that feedback to strengthen future operational C2 training.”

Last EC-130H Makes Its Final Flight Ahead of Retirement

Last EC-130H Makes Its Final Flight Ahead of Retirement

Sept. 3, 2026 | By Greg Hadley and Todd South

The last EC-130H Compass Call in the Air Force’s active inventory made its final flight Sept. 2, as the service prepares to retire the venerable electronic warfare aircraft and pivot to the new EA-37B.

A spokesperson for the 55th Wing confirmed the event, often called a “fini flight,” to Air & Space Forces Magazine. A formal retirement ceremony for the aircraft will take place Sept. 18 at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., where the last flight also took place.

Aviation photographer Steven Fortson snapped images of the final flight, including photos of an EA-37 in the air at the same time.

The end has been a long time coming for the EC-130H—the Air Force first announced plans to retire the EC-130 in 2014 and finally awarded a contract to what was then L3 Technologies to move critical mission systems from the aircraft to new business jets in 2017. The first of the Compass Calls retired in 2021, and the Air Force has slowly culled the 14-aircraft in the years since.

At the same time, the aircraft and its crews have stayed extremely busy given the demand for electronic warfare capabilities. First converted from the workhorse C-130 Hercules in the early 1980s, the type can target, block, and jam enemy communications, radar, or navigation signals.

Aircraft spotters noted one landing in the Caribbean last December, days before Operation Absolute Resolve, the high-stakes raid on Caracas, Venezuela, to snatch and grab Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. And U.S. Central Command confirmed early this year it used the EC-130H in the early days of Operation Epic Fury, the air campaign against Iran.

Indeed, the EC-130 has been a fixture in operations for more than 35 years. It saw its combat debut during Operations Just Cause in Panama in 1989, then flew in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999, and throughout the Global War on Terror over Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria during the 2000s.

Now, much of its mission is transferring to the EA-37B, a modified Gulfstream 550 that will include about 70 percent of the EC-130’s EW systems unchanged. The EA-37B carries a combat crew of nine people, down from 13 on the EC-130H.

The first EA-37 arrived at Davis-Monthan in August 2024, and the jets deployed to support Operation Epic Fury in late March, making their combat debut before the EA-37 had even been formally declared operational. More deployed to the United Kingdom in July, as hostilities with Iran persisted.

Right now, the Air Force has only five EA-37s of the 10 aircraft it has ordered. But the service has plans to expand the fleet to 22 airframes with procurement continuing through 2031. Officials say the expanded fleet—even bigger than the original EC-130H fleet—is necessary given the importance of electronic warfare in modern combat and the demand from combatant commanders.

Pentagon Editor Chris Gordon contributed to this report.

Air Force Releases Results from Inspections of M18 Pistols

Air Force Releases Results from Inspections of M18 Pistols

Sept. 3, 2026 | By Matthew Cox

The Air Force has ruled the M18 service pistol is “safe and reliable” after inspecting more than 100,000 of the service’s 9mm pistols, according to a Sept. 2 announcement. Leaders ordered a force-wide inspection after a July 20, 2025, discharge of an M18 killed an on-duty security forces Airman at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.

The death of 21-year-old Airman Brayden Lovan was originally believed to be “a result of an accidental discharge” and fueled safety concerns about the M18—a Sig-Sauer pistol based on its P320 striker-fired weapon. Multiple lawsuits filed against Sig Sauer, mostly by law enforcement officers, have alleged that P320 pistols can discharge unintentionally.

The concerns prompted Air Force Global Strike Command to launch its own investigation and temporarily bar troops from using the M18. The Air Force ordered a service-wide inspection of its “in-use” M18s soon after. Global Strike Command cleared the pistol to return to use in late August 2025 after its own inspections.

More than a year later, the Air Force announced the results of its inspections—though the actual inspection report is dated Jan. 23. As of that date, the service has inspected 113,479 of its 117,864 “in-use” M18s. In total, the service has 125,917 M18s in its inventory—8,053 remain not in use at a depot in Alabama, the report states.

Of the 113,479 M18s inspected, 111,893, or 98.6 percent, were deemed “satisfactory,” the report states. The other 1,586, or 1.4 percent, of the M18s had parts that were “lightly pitted” or required adjustment. Those pistols were categorized as “other than satisfactory,” the report states.

“Some weapons displayed normal wear and tear commensurate with their usage schedule and high rates of manual functioning for skill building during classroom training and daily arming,” the report states. The Air Force “has or will return 1,586 identified during this inspection … with normal wear to ‘serviceable’ condition through standard maintenance procedures.”

The remaining 4,385 “in-use” M18s left to be inspected are “sealed” in extended storage, the report states, adding that commands that own the pistols will be required to complete the inspections.

“Subject matter experts have a high degree of confidence that these final inspections will yield similar findings as the rest of the inventory,” the report states.

Overall, “100 percent of the inspected weapons exhibited no signs of any condition that could have allowed the weapons to experience an ‘uncommanded discharge,’” according to the report.

After an initial investigation into Lovan’s July 20 shooting, criminal investigators learned that Airman 1st Class Marcus White-Allen had concocted a story with two other Airmen to cover up that he fired his M18 pistol into Lovan’s chest.

Laboratory tests have “determined there were no defects in White-Allen’s duty-issued weapon,” according to the Air Force statement. “Evidence determined White-Allen had his finger on the trigger as he placed the firearm on Lovan’s chest.”

Authorities arrested White-Allen in early August and charged him with involuntary manslaughter, obstruction of justice, and making a false official statement. On Oct. 8, he was found dead in his dormitory, according to the Air Force. Details surrounding White-Allen’s death remain unclear.

Airman 1st Class Sarbjot Badesha and Airmen 1st Class Matthew Rodriguez pleaded guilty to making false statements about the shooting during summary courts martial proceedings on Oct. 30-31, the Air Force said Oct. 31 in a statement. Authorities sentenced Badesha to 30 days in confinement, reduced his rank to E-1 and fined him $1,545. Rodriguez was sentenced to 10 days confinement and 15 days restriction to base. He was also reduced in rank to E-2 and fined $500, according to the statement.

Schiess Sworn in as New Space Force Chief: ‘We Must Grow with Intention’

Schiess Sworn in as New Space Force Chief: ‘We Must Grow with Intention’

Sept. 3, 2026 | By Courtney Albon

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md.—Gen. Douglas A. Schiess assumed leadership of the Space Force on Sept. 3, succeeding Gen. B. Chance Saltzman as Chief of Space Operations during a change of responsibility ceremony here. 

Schiess is just the third CSO in the Space Force’s history since the service was created in 2019. In his first address to Guardians, he emphasized the important role space has come to play in modern military operations—and the growing threats it attracts from adversaries intent on targeting space assets in orbit and on the ground.

“Every day, our potential adversaries advance their efforts to disrupt, degrade, and destroy our space capabilities, and they try to add to their own capacity to exploit space to their advantage,” Schiess said. “We cannot, we will not let that happen.”

A career space operator, Schiess has performed a number of missions in his career including missile warning, GPS, command and control, and launch. In 2023, he became the first commander of U.S. Space Forces-Space, USSF’s component to the U.S. Space Command combatant command. Most recently, he served as deputy CSO for operations, developing and implementing the policies that guide Space Force operations around the world. 

That experience, he said, will inform the way he leads Guardians trained “to operate in the cold, dark vacuum of space” from operations centers on the ground that are also under threat—as evidenced in ongoing operations in the Middle East, where Iran has targeted ground-based space and missile defense infrastructure.

“Our Guardians operate from the ground, some in harm’s way—some in harm’s way today—and they require battlefield skills and the warrior mentality as much as our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen in our sister services,” he said.

Schiess’ emphasis on the growing threats and the warfighting contributions of Guardians continue themes that his predecessor, Saltzman, repeated often throughout his tenure.

Over the past four years, Saltzman helped grow the Space Force from 8,000 uniformed Guardians to 10,000—and he has positioned the force for even more expansion in the coming years. The service is on a path to double in size to 20,000 Guardians over the next five years, and its $71 billion budget request for fiscal 2027 is more than twice what USSF requested last year, as demand increases for space capabilities. 

Speaking during the ceremony, Saltzman said he’s proud of the progress the Space Force has made, evidenced in recent months by its delivery of “critical effects” during multiple operations.

“We delivered critical effects on time and on target under fire, and we sustained that effort,” Saltzman said. “When called to action, the U.S. Space Force was ready, combat capable, and mission effective, and that about says it all.”

Saltzman praised Schiess’ leadership, operational experience, and genuine concern for Guardians, their families, and the joint and allied partners they serve alongside. 

“He knows how to build teams, how to drive performance, and how to coax bureaucracies into mission success,” Saltzman said. “He has the expertise to make wise decisions. . . . He cares deeply for the people that do the work.”

In his first message to the force, issued shortly after his swearing in, Schiess harkened back to the Space Force’s early days and looked ahead to the future, calling on Guardians to “capitalize on our foundation and evolve to meet the demands of a new era.”

“As we drive our deliberate growth and execution, we will arm our Guardians to acquire, field, operate, and exploit the full spectrum of capabilities required to secure decisive space superiority,” he said. “Integrating into the Joint Force demands a rapid scaling of both our manpower and space capabilities. We must grow with intention, leveraging our industry partnerships to advance our weapon systems and the way we fight.”

Along with Schiess’ ascension to the service chief job this week, the Department of the Air Force also welcomed its assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration, Erich Hernandez-Baquero, who was sworn in at the Pentagon on Aug. 31. Hernandez-Baquero, who will oversee a growing space acquisition portfolio, fills a position that has been vacant since January 2025, though several officials have served in an acting capacity.