The Outstanding Airmen

The U.S. military conducted a punishing series of airstrikes against Islamic State militants on Dec. 8 following the sudden demise of the ruling Assad regime. U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bombers, F-15E Strike Eagles, and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft conducted dozens of airstrikes against Islamic State leaders, fighters, and…

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III touted the Air Force’s B-21 Raider bomber and the military’s new command and control technologies in a major address at the Reagan National Defense Forum on the Biden administration’s legacy in national security. 

The People’s Republic of China is expanding the range of its missiles and aircraft farther and farther beyond its shores, causing the U.S. Air Force to double down on its commitment to agile combat employment and focus on the complex logistics of a potential Indo-Pacific fight, the head of Pacific…

Machine learning AI (AI/ML) is quite different from the generative AI large language models that have captured headlines and public imagination in the last two years, but it is vital to help human analysts sift through and make sense of the huge amount of data coming off of and about the…

The Air Force’s first new warrant officers in 66 years graduated Dec. 6 at a ceremony at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., the inaugural class of the new Warrant Officer Training School.

O.J. Sanchez, a former Air Force F-22 pilot and currently the vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Integrated Fighter Group, will take over as head of the company’s Skunk Works advanced products unit in January. He succeeds John Clark, who is taking on a new position as the…

The Air Force Global Strike Command is considering long-range, autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft as partners for its bombers but is waiting to see how they prove out with the fighter force first, the head of the command said Dec. 5.

Russia has grown desperate because of its grinding war against Ukraine—and the People’s Republic of China has leveraged that to gain more access to the strategically vital Arctic region, where it has engaged in “unprecedented styles of collaboration” with the Russians, a top Pentagon official said Dec. 5. 

The Air Force is deferring decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance stealth fighter program to the incoming Trump Administration, the service announced. It will continue its review of the program in the meantime, as well as continue the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction phase being performed by undisclosed contractors.