Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula (right) received the Gen. Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz Award at the 2025 Air Force Historical Foundation Awards Banquet held at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly Va., from Jonna Doolittle Hoppes (granddaughter of Jimmy Doolittle) and Robert Arnold (grandson of Hap Arnold). Jud McCrehin/staff
Photo Caption & Credits
AFA IN ACTION: Deptula, Chilton Earn AFHF Lifetime Honors
Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org
The Air Force Historical Foundation honored a pair of storied Airmen with lifetime achievement awards at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center May 22.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, was awarded the Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz Award for his lifetime contributions to Air Force history, including authoring the seminal Air Force White Paper, “Global Reach—Global Power,” and his instrumental role in planning the air campaign in Operation Desert Storm and the concept of “effects-based operations.”
Retired Air Force Gen. Kevin P. “Chili” Chilton, the Explorer Chair for the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence, received the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award for Space, for a career that included being a NASA astronaut, commander of Air Force Space Command, and commander of U.S. Strategic Command. Chilton’s career also included a historic return to Air Force service after 11 years at NASA, which amounted to a policy shift when he made that move.
“Airpower has always been more than just a strategic tool,” Deptula said. “It embodies innovation, agility, and the ability to shape outcomes at the speed of relevance.”
Capturing and studying airpower history, he added, is essential in order to ensure future generations learn from it. “The voices captured in oral histories and the hard-earned lessons of those who came before us are not just artifacts of a bygone era,” Deptula said. “They are fuel for the future.”
Retired Gen. Kevin Chilton received the AFHF Lifetime Achievement Award for Space at the banquet and was surprised, humbled, and honored to be its first recipient. Jud McCrehin/staff
Chilton reflected on his return to active duty after 11 years at NASA and the leaders who supported him, including then-Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman.
“I’m deeply grateful for their willingness to literally take a chance on a guy they knew nothing about,” Chilton said. “I like to say I was kind of like ‘Encino Man.’ I’d been freeze-dried in NASA for 11 years and then came back to the United States Air Force. Quite frankly, I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to catch back up.”
The nonprofit Air Force Historical Foundation was founded in 1953 by Spaatz and other airpower pioneers to preserve and promote Air Force heritage, and since the Space Force’s founding in 2019, has also been dedicated to preserving Space Force history through publications, events, and other activities. Learn more about the Air Force Historical Foundation’s award winners here: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-historical-foundation-reveals-winners-of-prestigious-awards/?.
Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org
More than 130 Airmen and Guardians have returned to service after leaving the military rather than receive the COVID-19 vaccine. And more could follow, an Air Force official said.
When Space Force leaders started talking about expanding the service early this year, the idea was simple: double the size of the force in the next five years. At AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference this week, officials detailed just how they’re planning to grow so much so quickly.
The Air Force is targeting August 2027 for its new T-7A Red Hawk trainer jet to reach its initial operational capability. To get there, the head of Air and Education Training has three milestones he needs to see the program hit.
The Air Force F-117A Nighthawk—America’s first stealth fighter—will soon go on display among other iconic aircraft at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum's Udva-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
Under a late summer sun, Air Force basic trainees practice safely rearming a retired F-16 Fighting Falcon at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, with mock AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Nearby, a bulldozer levels the ground where the rest of this first new airbase training range will sit.
Strategic guidance from the command in charge of Air Force training lays out a plan to train all Airmen in artificial intelligence and build “Digital Airmen” across the force’s training and education enterprise.
In the small world of Air Force weather specialists, combat weather specialists are a niche unto themselves, deploying with Army ground units to provide forecasts and, if need be, fight alongside those Soldiers. For Staff Sgt. Francisco Estrada, the hardest part of the job isn’t the possibility of ground combat,…
✓
Thank You!
Check your inbox to verify your email address and finish setting up your AFA account.
★
Welcome Back!
An account with this email already exists. Please log in to continue.
Subscribe to the Air & Space Forces Daily Report
The latest news from Air & Space Forces Magazine, as well as news from other leading publications, delivered right to your inbox every morning!
We’re sorry, there has been an error. Please review your input or try again later.
