Smackdown in Iran ‘15 years of incredible work’—the inside story of Operation Midnight Hammer. By Chris Gordon The 36-hour operation to fly deep into Iranian airspace in June and destroy three heavily fortified nuclear complexes began more than 15 years...
July/August 2025
Vol. 108, No. 7
Congress passed the Big Beautiful Bill. Now for the 2026 Budget. By the time the 2026 defense budget request arrived on Capitol Hill in June, Congress was closing in on passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, a massive...
Cheap drones may be changing warfare, but the value of air superiority endures. The proliferation of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has shaken up the military world, fueling concern that UAVs could revolutionize airpower concepts and even negate the need...
Strategy & Policy: NATO Members Sign Up for More Spending
N ATO appears to be getting serious about spending enough on defense to keep Russia and other threats at bay. In the June NATO summit at The Hague, Netherlands, members vaulted past the alliance’s longstanding goal—never quite achieved—of all members...
Disconnected by Design: A New Way to Employ 5th-Gen Jets
Disaggregated Collaborative Air Operations offers a creative responseto China’s focus on disrupting U.S. combat networks. By J. Michael Dahm The U.S. Air Force operational concepts for penetrating into contested areas assume that U.S. forces can maintain highly networked connectivity and...
Editorial: Global Reach, Global Power
“Topgun: Maverick” captured movie audiences with a plot built around the mission to destroy a fictional country’s uranium enrichment facility hidden deep in a remote mountain range. Combined with a feel-good redemption backstory, the movie depicts a four-ship of...
WORLD: Air Base Defense
Experts Warn of Pacific Threats By Matthew Cox Ukraine’s drone strike on Russian bomber bases didn’t just shock Russia—it also raised alarm among U.S. officials concerned that American military installations could also be vulnerable to attack. Nicknamed “Operation Spiderweb,” the...
WORLD: Training
Major Exercises Kick Off By Greg Hadley The Air Force and Space Force kicked off a busy summer of major exercises across the Pacific on July 8, with thousands of Airmen and Guardians set to participate in a series of...
WORLD: Advanced Technology
Air Force Pushes Ahead with 2 Hypersonic Missile Programs By John A. Tirpak The Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) is delayed and may significantly overrun its expected cost, which could partially explain why the service is reviving the...
WORLD: Personnel
USAF, USSF Hit Recruiting Goals—3 Months Early By Chris Gordon The Space Force and Air Force both hit their fiscal 2025 recruiting goals with months to spare, extending a promising trend that has boosted the services’ ranks. The Space Force goal...
WORLD: Space
Commerce Cuts Space Traffic Management Program By Shaun Waterman The first Trump administration moved to relieve the Space Force of its burden to monitor and warn civilian space operators about potential space traffic hazards. But now, just as the Commerce...
Faces of the Force
Tell us who you think we should highlight here. Write to letters@afa.org. Tech. Sgt. Michelle Doolittle, a vocalist in the U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa Band, honors her heritage through music and military service as the great-grandniece of...
Verbatim
A-10 Scar Tissue “We wouldn’t be having this discussion about the A-10 if we had optimized the deliveries of the F 35A. The F-35 was designed to replace the F-117, the A-10 and F-15E model, but we truncated the buy...
Letters
We love letters! Write to us at letters@afa.org. To be published, letters should be timely, relevant and concise. Include your name and location. Letters may be edited for space and the editors have final say on which are published. Completed...
Heroes and Leaders: Alexander P. de Seversky
A futurist with airpower prowess. A lexander deSeversky was a well-known and popular aviation figure in America during World War II. He was a fighter ace and war hero, aircraft designer, entrepreneur, writer, and theorist. In that last role he...
AFA in Action: 16 Generals to Congress: Buy More F-35s, Fund the E-7
S ixteen retired four-star generals joined Air & Space Forces leadership in a joint letter to Congress advocating for greater investment in F-35 fighters in fiscal 2026 and to fund the E-7 Wedgetail as an essential successor to the E-3...
AFA Nominees: 2025-2026
Candidates for National Officers and Directors.The Air & Space Forces Association Nominating and Governance Committee met by video conference in April 2025 and selected four candidates to send forward for open National Officer positions and National Director positions on the...
