China is making a play to wrest air superiority from the U.S., and if it succeeds, the U.S. risks losing a potential war quickly, commander of Air Combat Command Gen. Mark D. Kelly said. Kelly described the service's fighter roadmap, saying a new fighter system is worthy of a "Manhattan Project" level of effort and funding.

The Air Force Recruiting Service is on target to meet its goals for the entire department, the AFRS commander said Sept. 22. At the same time, trends indicate a challenging future for the Air and Space Forces as they go after the next generation of Airmen and Guardians.

The Air Force is considering whether senior military officers without technical experience or skills should continue to be put in charge of advanced technology acquisition programs following a blistering resignation letter from the service’s chief software officer earlier this month. Nicolas M. Chaillan, who had held the position since May 2019, “has really helped us move forward and [highlighted] things that we need to change in the Department of the Air Force, relative to improving our software skills,” Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Darlene Costello told a media roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference on Sept. 21.

Using new digital methods to design a future Air Force fighter costs more than the traditional approach, but subsequent iterations could be done faster and less expensively, senior Air Force officials said Sept. 22. They also cautioned that the “Digital Century Series” is not synonymous with the Next Generation Air Dominance program and that no decision has been made about whether to take the approach on an NGAD successor.

The U.S. military plans to "be there" for NASA and commercial providers of “critical” space capabilities as activity picks up on and around the moon. Commander of the joint-service U.S. Space Command, Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, made the pledge during his speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 21. He added that the Artemis program, NASA’s planned lunar exploration campaign, “presents an exciting opportunity” for the command.

Discussions within the Space Force and between it and industry partners about new architectures for satellite constellations are sometimes hampered by the extraordinarily high levels of classification involved, a Lockheed Martin executive told AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Information about the vulnerabilities of military satellites, such as to cyberattacks, is typically highly classified in this fashion. But that secrecy “makes it really difficult to have the kinds of engagements [with vendors] that are required in order to select future force designs and capabilities,” said Eric Brown, Lockheed Martin’s director for military space mission strategy.