As 2025 draws to a close, Air & Space Forces Magazine selected several dozen of the best photos capturing exploration, activities, achievements, challenges, salutes, history, and milestones for Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Check them out below, and Happy Holidays!
Warfighter Training
The Air Force plans to conduct more intensive training—and Congress is set to help by boosting funding for exercises and so-called “campaigning” by hundreds of millions of dollars, particularly in the Pacific.
Air Force Futures wants to take its wargaming up a notch, with the help of artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technology.
Fail Today, Win Tomorrow: Reflecting on Pacific Wargames By David Roza The Department of the Air Force swung for the fences this summer with a massive six-week exercise stretching from Japan to New Mexico where more than 12,000 Airmen and 700...
Collaborative Combat Aircraft Missions Come into Focus By John A. Tirpak Air Force Secretary Troy Meink is leaning toward a less costly, less sophisticated concept for Increment 2 of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) autonomous fighter escort program. Yet it...
The Air Force has approved Airmen to start training with the EA-37B Compass Call Mission Crew Simulator, BAE Systems announced. The system will provide realistic training and mission rehearsal for EA-37B crews, who perform long-range electromagnetic warfare missions.
The need to defend air bases was made painfully clear at Hickam Field in December 1941. Yet even now we continue to park aircraft in the open, often wingtip-to-wingtip, all over the country and have essentially no way of providing terminal defense against air attack.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's recent direction that the military services return to a more old-school approach to basic training—with instructors "tossing bunks" and "putting their hands on recruits”—will likely require the Air Force to rewrite policies for military training instructors it has modified over time ...
Air Force officials say they're making progress on getting the T-7A Red Hawk trainer on track after years of delays—and now they're even exploring whether they can shift some training duties from the T-6 Texan II to the Red Hawk down the road.
