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 ...
Warfighter Training
ADVERTISEMENTWarfighter Training
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 Air Force has begun depriving new trainees of more sleep and will soon ramp up the stress level in Basic Military Training to better prepare Airmen for the increased strain of combat operations such as Epic Fury.
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.
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 ...
In June 2026, airpower experts from the U.S. Air Force, seven allied air forces, and industry convened for a three-day wargame designed to stress notional 2036 USAF combat forces in a series of concurrent crises: a Russian assault against NATO...
New Enlisted Recruiting Commander By Todd South The Air Force appointed a colonel to head enlisted recruiting, more than 18 months after combining officer and enlisted recruiting into a single organization. Col. Lacresha A. Merkle took command of Air Force...
Summer is a unique time at the U.S. Air Force Academy for cadets to focus almost entirely on military training, unconstrained by competing academic, sports, and extracurricular priorities.
The Airman’s imperative to defend from small uninhabited aerial vehicles. The air base has become a central target set. Small drones have become one of the defining air threats of modern warfare, representing a structural change in the character of...
