What Might the Future Hold for the F-35?

June 11, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

As futuristic aviation programs gain priority, the F-35—the only in-production, fifth-generation American fighter—is facing new headwinds. Fresh debate over its challenges and its potential in the coming months will shape its future role in the force.

The House’s $150 billion reconciliation package of defense add-ons contains $7.2 billion for cutting-edge tactical aviation accounts, including USAF’s new sixth-generation F-47 and its autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and largest of all, $3.15 billion for additional F-15EX fighters. Notably absent: even a single penny for the F-35.

“Think about it: It’s the largest acquisition program in DOD,” said Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute. “Congress gets an extra $150 billion, and they don’t put any of it toward that program? That says something about the sentiment around the F-35.”

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin said only that: “We appreciate the additional investment in national defense that Congress is considering through the budget reconciliation process, as well as the strong and continued support for the F-35 program.”

As Congress put the final touches on the reconciliation package in April, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) released an unasked-for explainer in defense of estimated lifetime program costs that have swelled to $2.1 trillion. The estimate includes the cost of 2,456 aircraft for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, plus operations, sustainment, upgrades, military construction, personnel, and inflation over 94 years. Fully half the estimate is inflation, the JPO said. This calculus is unique; F-35 is the first major defense program required to predict all those future costs.

A JPO spokesperson said Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt “wanted to provide a breakdown of costs and … context directly from the program.” To date, the F-35 program has delivered nearly 1,200 aircraft to the three U.S. branches and foreign allies and partners; of these, the Air Force has more than 450 jets, or about a quarter of its planned 1,763.

Chronic Irritants

With a sprawling supply chain and shifting annual buys, it’s not surprising that the F-35 is in constant flux, or that Congress is impatient.

From mid-2023 to mid-2024, the government wouldn’t accept delivery of F-35s until new processors, software and displays, included with the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade had been fully tested. Then Schmidt cleared deliveries to resume last summer, even though TR-3 testing was still underway, saying the software was safe for flight and required less in-flight reboots.

Overall procurement costs per jet are low, but costs per flying hour have remained stubbornly high across all variants. That’s led the Air Force and Navy to fly their F-35s much less—19 percent less for the Air Force and 45 percent less for the Navy—over the life of the program. They intend for pilots to make up for lost flying time in simulators.

It took until 2024 for the Pentagon to declare initial development complete, 23 years after the program got underway. Achieving “Milestone C” cleared the F-35 for full-rate production, but production has essentially been at full-rate capacity for several years. The last few years of delay in achieving Milestone C were pegged to challenges integrating the F-35 into the Joint Simulation Environment.

No Deal Yet

One ongoing hangup is that the JPO and its suppliers have not settled the details for the next two lots of F-35 production. Negotiations on Lots 18 and 19 dragged on nearly three years before Lockheed and the JPO reached a “handshake agreement” on the price last November, but the two parties have yet to achieve a “definitized” contract that spells out unit costs.

Inflation, supply chain, and labor cost issues dating back to the COVID-19 pandemic have often been cited for the extended bargaining, but more recently tariffs imposed by President Donald J. Trump have added additional concerns. The JPO declined comment on how tariffs could affect costs for imported raw materials and parts, referring questions to the State Department, which did not respond to calls and emails. The F-35 is globally sourced, with production contracts spread among dozens of countries, most of which are developmental partners or customers for the aircraft.

“The tariff situation changes almost by the day, if not the hour,” said one industry source. “How do you plan in this environment?”

Chauncey McIntosh, Lockheed’s F-35 chief, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in March that “working with our supply base, we’ve really been able to keep the price of the airplane under that inflation curve [despite] inflation.”

The last negotiated unit cost for the F-35A—the Air Force’s conventional takeoff and landing variant—was about $85 million per airframe. Pratt & Whitney’s F135 powerplant—which is purchased separately and arrives at Lockheed’s factory as government-furnished equipment—is believed to cost about $15 million per engine. The engine cost, which Pratt says is proprietary, is the sticking point. Industry sources said negotiations could drag into late summer or fall.

Lockheed officials say Lot 18 and later jets are more capable and will cost more, which could push the unit price of the F-35 over the $100 million mark.

Once Lots 18 and 19 are finalized, multiyear contracting can begin with Lot 20 and beyond. Lockheed Chief Financial Officer Evan Scott said in May the two lots now under negotiation could be combined into a single contract.

Mixed Messages from the White House

The White House could be a wildcard for the F-35 program. Elon Musk has posted derogatory remarks on “X,” his social media site, calling the F-35 obsolete and a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none.” He champions autonomous, uncrewed aircraft, even as the Air Force sees such equipment as complementary, rather than replacing the Lightning II.

Trump, on the other hand, has praised the F-35 as the “greatest fighter jet in the world,” touting its stealth as “almost … invisible,” while acknowledging that it is “more expensive than we expected it to be.”

He has also expressed misgivings about the international nature of F-35 production. “We have the wings built in one country, we have the tail rudders built in another country, we have the seats built in another country, we have the electronics built in seven countries,” he said in September 2024. “What the hell would we do if there’s a war, and we’ll end up fighting half those countries?”

Trump promised instead, that “we will require all essential materials for our national security to be produced here in the United States,” which he said would create “millions and millions of manufacturing jobs.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the Pentagon to find 8 percent savings annually for five years, and provided a list of priority programs and activities excluded from the cuts. Those included CCAs, munitions and shipbuilding, but made no mention the F-35.

A ‘Ferrari’ F-35

Meanwhile, Lockheed is still smarting from losing the competition to build the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter now known as the F-47. Boeing won that deal in March. Lockheed has also been eliminated from the competition to build the Navy’s NGAD counterpart, the F/A-XX, and it lost out to Anduril Industries and General Atomics on the Air Force’s CCA program.

Now Lockheed is touting a proposal to soup up the F-35 as either a cost-saving complement or alternative to the F-47.

Company CEO Jim Taiclet told analysts on an earnings call that the technologies Lockheed developed for NGAD can be applied “fairly quickly” to the F-35, creating a “supercharged … fifth-generation-plus” fighter.

“I feel that we can have 80 percent” of the NGAD capability “potentially, at 50 percent of the cost-per-unit,” Taiclet said, “by taking the F-35 chassis and applying numerous advanced technologies, some of which are already in process” as part of the Block 4 upgrade.

“There will be 3,500 of those chassis out there, at various stages of technology and capability,” he added, including both U.S. and partner fleets, and “we can get most of the way to sixth-gen” with them.

If F-47 is to cost some $300 million per copy—an estimate offered by former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall—Taiclet’s “Ferrari” version of the F-35 could be had for perhaps $150 million per copy.

Many of the technologies that could be applied to an uprated F-35 have already been paid for, Taiclet said, both through government and Lockheed’s own investment. Taiclet described passive infrared sensing and long-range missiles, but otherwise didn’t elaborate on specifics. He said it would employ “key techniques and approaches that [the] fighter pilot needs to have to be competitive and win,” he said.

The JPO had no comment on the proposal, which it called “notional.”

The Bird in Hand

Mark Gunzinger, director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, called the exclusion of extra funds for F-35 in the reconciliation package “very, very worrisome.” Neglecting the F-35 “does not make sense,” he said, given that the Tech Refresh 3 jets are “rolling off the line” now, and “the software is almost there, as well.”

The F-15EX has a useful role to play as a munition truck and a platform for hypersonic missiles, he said, and USAF should “buy them as fast as we can,” they should not be prioritized over the F-35.

“Given the requirement” for a stealthy, penetrating, stand-in fighter and the long development pipeline to fully prove out F-47 and CCAs, “pushing F-35 buys to the right” is the wrong approach, Gunzinger said.

“They are in production. They’re what we can buy now,” he said. “They … enhance deterrence [and] create a much more capable force.”

Defense Budget Debate Spotlights Republican Divide on Ukraine

June 11, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Efforts to craft the Pentagon’s next budget has highlighted disagreement among Republicans on whether the U.S. should continue to support Ukraine in its three-year war with Russia, pitting some key GOP defense hawks against the Trump administration on questions of military aid and larger concerns about America’s role on the world stage.

Republican support for Ukraine has been a steady refrain as lawmakers consider the Pentagon’s $832 billion base spending request for 2026—which the department hasn’t yet made public—and a rare point of contention on defense between the GOP-controlled legislature and White House.

The standoff came into view at a Senate defense appropriations hearing where, in the absence of budget details, senators urged Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not to let Ukraine fall into Russian hands.

Subcommittee Chairman Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a vocal critic of Moscow, opened the hearing by asking the secretary which country is the aggressor and which is the victim. Russia is the aggressor, Hegseth answered.

“Which side do you want to win?” asked the former Senate majority leader.

“This president is committed to peace in that conflict,” Hegseth said. “Ultimately peace serves our national interests and, we think, the interests of both parties, even if that outcome will not be preferable to many in this room and many in our country.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine testify at a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing to examine the Pentagon’s proposed 2026 budget, Washington, D.C., June 11, 2025. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

McConnell continued: “Which side is [Chinese President Xi Jinping] pulling for?”

“Under the previous administration and the policies they’ve pursued, it has driven Russia and China closer together,” Hegseth said. “There’s no doubt that China would prefer that Vladimir Putin have a good outcome. But it would also prefer a prolonged conflict that would keep us and other countries tied down and incapable of paying attention to the malign influence of China elsewhere.”

Hegseth argued that Democratic administrations emboldened Russia’s gradual invasion of Ukraine starting in 2014, and that Putin’s respect for President Donald Trump will help lead to a peace agreement.

“A negotiated peace in Ukraine makes America look strong, makes us look like we understand the state of the world and where we want to be focused, even if we understand that Russia’s the aggressor and we applaud the efforts of the Ukrainians,” Hegseth said. “There is a moment where you have to recognize what exists on the battlefield and that a better outcome is a negotiated peace to stop the killing. … Our budget reflects that perspective.”

McConnell countered that the Russians don’t seem interested in negotiating, and the U.S. is risking its reputation by withdrawing support. “Will we defend democratic allies against authoritarian aggressors?” he asked.

No answer followed.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth meets with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 12, 2025. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander C. Kubitza)

Trump promised as a candidate that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, but diplomatic efforts have not progressed, and he has since suggested the war might have to drag on. Meanwhile, he has not indicated an appetite to continue financial support for Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s February visit to the White House ended abruptly after he, Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance found themselves in a heated argument in the Oval Office during a press availability. Trump halted military aid shipments days later.

Two rounds of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have failed to produce a ceasefire, leading Trump to compare the two countries to children.

“Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Trump said during a June 5 meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.

Earlier this month, Hegseth skipped the latest gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, representing more than 50 nations providing military support. It was the first such meeting not attended by a U.S. defense secretary, who typically chairs the sessions.

Trump has gone back and forth on how to get Putin to the table, alternately encouraging the Russian leader and considering sanctions. Meanwhile, the Russian and Ukrainian militaries continue the fight that one recent assessment found has killed nearly 1.4 million people so far.

At the June 11 appropriations hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally and defense hawk who is leading a Russia-sanctions bill, urged the administration to pressure China and India to stop funding the war by threatening to lock those countries out of American markets if they won’t stop buying Russian oil.

Graham asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine if he thought Putin is going to stop if he wins in Ukraine.

“I don’t believe he is, sir,” Caine answered.

Hegseth added: “Remains to be seen.”

“Well, [Putin] says he’s not,” Graham said. “This is the ’30s all over again. It doesn’t remain to be seen. He tells everybody around what he wants to do.”

“We gotta get this stuff right,” he continued. “Russia will dismember Ukraine and keep going if we don’t stop them.”

The House and Senate armed services committees will also have chances to press Hegseth on Ukraine policy this month. At a hearing on the Air Force’s 2026 budget request last week, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) referred to the Russian president as “war criminal Putin” and Ukrainians as “courageous patriots.”

Lawmakers could add pro-Ukraine provisions to the defense spending and policy bills but would ultimately need Trump’s approval to enact them.

The House Appropriations Committee’s draft defense spending bill does not include funding for Ukraine aid, nor does the sweeping tax-and-spending package known as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” Congress can pass that bill without Democratic votes through the budget reconciliation process, which lowers the vote threshold for approval.

The Pentagon’s base budget request also eliminates funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, Democrats said. Hegseth told House appropriators on June 10 the administration would seek “a reduction” in spending on Ukraine.

“I don’t think the word ‘victory’ has been well defined, or the path to it,” Hegseth said when asked about the decision to slash Ukraine aid.

The U.S. has approved $67 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s unprovoked invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. The Pentagon is still delivering military equipment authorized in the final four rounds of aid approved under presidential drawdown authority by the Biden administration, Hegseth said June 10.

In a joint statement on Putin’s rejection of a ceasefire in March, the chairmen of the House and Senate armed services panels applauded Trump’s effort to broker a peace deal but said Ukraine must continue to receive intelligence and military assets from the U.S. and NATO.

**Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) speaks at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Sept. 12, 2024. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Madelyn Keech)**

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, typically wears a Ukrainian flag pin affixed to his lapel. He said his display of support was initially very popular, but more recently has drawn criticism. It’s an outward sign of his continued belief that the U.S. needs to be steadfast in its support of Ukraine.

Wicker told reporters at a June 4 Defense Writers Group event he hopes U.S. negotiators now realize that Ukrainians intend to defend their homeland and need support as a smaller country with fewer resources to fight back.

Recent conversations with U.S. and Ukrainian officials have made him hopeful that American leaders will decide it’s in America’s best interest for Ukraine to prevail. He noted the reconciliation bill would expand the U.S. defense-industrial base to be the “arsenal of democracy.”

Russia shouldn’t be “rewarded for this series of war crimes that carry the most severe criminal penalties under international law,” he told reporters.

“The aggressors here, the bad guys, the people who would upend decades of international order are the Russians, and this affects America,” Wicker said. “I’m stubbornly pro-Ukraine because I’m pro-freedom and pro-democracy.”

Hegseth Pitches $3.5 Billion For F-47 in 2026 Budget

June 10, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first trip to Capitol Hill to argue for next year’s Pentagon budget shed new light on funding for some of the Air Force’s top-priority acquisition programs, even as the department continues to hide its 2026 request from view.

The military will invest in advanced technologies that could prevail in a war with China while cutting less-resilient equipment that has been saved by parochial interests, Pentagon officials told the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel at a June 10 hearing.

“President Trump has charged us with making the big difficult decisions after a lot of deferred maintenance and deferred decisions to ignore parochial priorities, in large part, and focus on what the department needs and where it needs it and when it needs it,” Hegseth said. “That means some tough calls.”

Hegseth said the Air Force will seek $3.5 billion for its future F-47 fighter, a next-generation jet that would direct drone wingmen around combat zones and aims to deceive Chinese air defenses in a potential conflict. House appropriators are offering the program slightly less money at $3.2 billion for 2026; the Republican-led reconciliation bill includes $400 million to accelerate its production.

In written testimony, Hegseth promised the F-47 will be the “most advanced, lethal, and adaptable fighter ever developed, with state-of-the-art stealth technologies to stay one step ahead of America’s adversaries.”

“The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters,” he said. “[The] platform will also take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy.”

Bloomberg reported June 4 the F-47 would siphon money away from F/A-XX, the Navy’s own effort to design a next-generation fighter. Boeing will begin building the Air Force’s secretive stealth jet under a contract worth an estimated $20 billion; the program is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars overall.

The Air Force is also asking for $804 million for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program that is designing AI-enabled drone wingmen to boost air power in a conflict without risking additional lives. House appropriators have not said how much money their bill would offer the program.

Hegseth told Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) the aircraft, in development at Anduril and General Atomics, are fully funded in the 2026 budget. Flight tests are slated to begin by the end of September, said Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, who is standing in as the Pentagon’s comptroller.

But Hegseth indicated those programs, which the Air Force has long touted as game-changers for air warfare, will come at the expense of other platforms that previously piqued the service’s interest.

He suggested the Air Force will abandon its plan to replace its E-3 air target-tracking planes with the E-7 Wedgetail, a more advanced airborne warning-and-control jet used by Australia and the United Kingdom. Air & Space Forces Magazine reported last month the E-7 program was on the chopping block in favor of a shift towards space-based surveillance.

“There are platforms we’ve supported as a result, and there’s some platforms and systems that we won’t support going forward,” Hegseth said when asked about the way forward on E-7 procurement. “We’ve learned a lot of things from what has happened in Ukraine. We’ve learned a lot from what China is attempting to do and the systems they’re building. So if we have systems and platforms that are not survivable in the modern battlefield or they don’t give us an advantage in a future fight, we have to make the tough decisions right now.”

The Pentagon will “fund existing platforms . . . more robustly and make sure they’re modernized,” he added.

While defense officials are willing to continue to review options like the E-7, Hegseth said, “investments in existing systems that carry forward that capability alongside even bigger investments in space-based [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] gives us the kind of advantages we need on a future battlefield.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), whose district is home to the remaining E-3s at Tinker Air Force Base, cautioned against retiring existing capabilities before relying on unproven technology in space. About half of the E-3 fleet has retired as the Air Force tries to piece together a network of sensors that could perform the same mission.

“I’ve been on this committee a long time,” Cole said. “I watched the U.S. Army waste $29 billion on the Future Combat Systems [program] because it was going to be so great.”

“I would just urge you to look at this pretty carefully as you make the decision,” he said. “We certainly will as a committee.”

Washington’s wait for the Pentagon’s $832 billion base budget blueprint—more than four months after the statutory deadline to send their ask to Congress—hasn’t stopped lawmakers from moving forward with their own ideas.

Shortly after questioning Hegseth, Woollacott MacDonnell, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine in a cramped hearing room in the Capitol complex, House appropriators headed upstairs to adopt an $832 billion defense spending bill without having received a plan from the administration to base it on.

“We don’t have the luxury of time,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the House defense appropriations panel, said at the hearing. “We’ll just have to work out the differences we have in conference. But it’s hard for us to do our job without the . . . detailed information.”

The full House Appropriations Committee will vote on its 2026 defense spending bill on June 12. The Pentagon is expected to publish its full budget request later this month.

New Skyraider II Instructor Pilots Racking Up Flight Hours

June 10, 2025 | By David Roza

The first batch of instructor pilots on one of the Air Force’s newest airframes are piling on the flight hours as they prepare to welcome their own students next fiscal year.

The first mission-ready OA-1K Skyraider II, a surveillance and attack aircraft, arrived at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Okla., in late April. It’s being flown by test crews and the initial cadre of instructor pilots, who will then train the first pilots for operational units starting in fiscal year 2026, an Air Force Special Operations Command spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“Multiple initial cadre members have passed 100 hours of flight time on the OA-1K,” the spokesperson said.

The 137th Special Operations Wing welcomed the Skyraider II at a ceremony June 7. A two-seat modified crop duster, the OA-1K will provide airborne eyes and ears as well as precision fires to support isolated special operations troops in the field, just as its namesake, the A-1 Skyraider, did in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Airmen with the 137th Special Operations Wing salute during the national anthem at an arrival ceremony for a 492nd SOW OA-1K Skyraider II on June 8, 2025, at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Oklahoma City. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Airman Erika Chapa)

More than 25 OA-1Ks will eventually settle at Will Rogers ANGB to support training and armed overwatch operations. The total fleet of 75 turboprop planes will be spread across four AFSOC bases. It’s not clear yet how many new OA-1K pilots are expected to train in Oklahoma every year.

“As the test efforts mature, we will be able to determine final syllabus requirements and how many students will be expected to train each year to satisfy operational requirements,” the spokesperson said.

Maj. Jehon Bendokas, chief of the armed overwatch requirements branch at AFSOC, expects the Skyraider II will be flying combat missions within the next two to three years. That’s nearly two decades after the Air Force launched its search for a simpler plane that could support the counterinsurgency fights in Iraq and Afghanistan and free up advanced assets for more complex missions.

The OA-1K is designed to provide the capabilities of multiple aircraft on a platform that’s less expensive and easier to maintain than purpose-built aircraft, and which can be easily modified to support new missions. During the Global War on Terror, air support for special operations often consisted of a “stack” of specialized attack, surveillance, or bombing aircraft, Bendokas explained.

“Collectively that stack adds up to a very expensive capability per flying hour,” he said on a June 4 episode of SOFcast, the official podcast of U.S. Special Operations Command. “The intent is to . . . collapse the stack, essentially take smatterings of those capabilities, make them modular, and make a platform that’s cost-effective, multirole, essentially, to be able to do close air support, precision strike, and armed [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance].”

For example, a Skyraider II might fly one sortie with an ISR-focused loadout to give a special operations team information on a village where they are about to meet with local leaders, Bendokas said. The aircraft could land and swap the payload for weapons if the team gets into trouble. The plug-and-play design should give the Skyraider II longevity as new capabilities are developed in the future, he added.

The program was further influenced by a 2017 ambush that killed four U.S. Green Berets near the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, according to Bendokas.

“The sequence of those events highlighted a gap in ISR and close air support coverage for geographically isolated SOF teams,” he said.

An OA-1K Skyraider II pilot conducts a walkaround on the flightline at Hurlburt Field, Florida, Jan. 28, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Natalie Fiorilli)

Skyraider II steps into that gap, which was previously filled by aircraft such as the A-1 Skyraider and A-37 Dragonfly. Those platforms “were absolute workhorses” for surveying the battlefield, providing forward air traffic control, and designating targets in Vietnam and Korea, he said. Many of the pilots and weapons systems officers who will soon fly the OA-1K previously flew the MC-12 and U-28 propeller planes, which played similar roles over Afghanistan and Iraq.

These crewed platforms often provide a sense of assurance for ground troops that uncrewed drones can’t, said Bendokas, a combat systems officer on the U-28.

“There are several cases that I’ve seen firsthand of the appreciation for having a human above the ground force,” he said. “At least you know that voice is above you . . . they’re there and they’re responsive and they’re not going to lose connectivity.”

Since they will likely operate without much support, Skyraider II crews may train to be more hands-on than those of other, more complicated aircraft, the major explained.

“Can we imagine a pilot that’s doing a level of maintenance similar to what a farmer’s able to do on his [agricultural] aircraft out in Oklahoma?” he said. “Imagine the weapons systems officer, the backseater, loading munitions with support of the pilot.”

That kind of self-reliance and small footprint could help the Skyraider II perform in agile combat employment, the Air Force concept where small groups of Airmen flit between dispersed airfields to avoid being targeted by enemy missiles.

“There is value proposition for this . . . across the spectrum of armed conflict,” Bendokas said.

Trump Budget Calls for More Airmen, Guardians in 2026

June 10, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Over half a million troops would serve in the Air Force and Space Force in 2026, the Trump administration said last week, keeping the workforce essentially flat as Airmen and Guardians tackle a growing list of missions around the globe.

The Air Force would gain nearly 3,300 active-duty Airmen and almost 1,700 in the reserve components under the president’s budget plan, for modest growth of about 1 percent across the total force, according to new details published by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. The Space Force would gain 326 Guardians, an increase of about 3 percent over 2025.

In total, the active-duty Air Force would grow to 321,500 Airmen, while the Space Force would hit 10,400 Guardians for its highest end strength since the smallest military branch was founded in 2019.

If enacted, the increase would mark the third-straight year of active-duty growth since 2024, when nearly 316,000 Airmen and 9,500 Guardians were in uniform. The Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard are also poised for slight increases to 67,500 and 106,300 Airmen, respectively.

All told, the Department of the Air Force would encompass 505,700 troops across the active-duty, Reserve and Guard. That’s nearly 5,300 more service members than the Air Force and Space Force currently employ. Overall, the U.S. military would grow to 1.3 million active-duty troops—an increase of less than 1 percent compared to 2025.

It’s unclear what missions the additional air and space personnel would perform. A spokesperson for the Department of the Air Force, which encompasses the two services, declined to provide more details on its workforce because the Pentagon has not fully released its 2026 budget draft.

The plan to grow comes as the Department of the Air Force appears to have reversed its recruiting woes of the past few years. The proposed uptick in uniformed personnel also stands in contrast to the Pentagon’s effort to slash its civilian workforce in tandem with the rest of the federal government, alleging cost savings and improved productivity.

The Department of the Air Force expects to lose about 12,600 civilian staffers, or 6 percent of its civilian workforce, to resignations and retirements spurred by the Trump administration’s downsizing efforts. The purge disproportionately affects the Space Force, in which civilians comprise about one-third of the total staff.

The White House has noted in budget documents that its estimates may not reflect all of the “management and administrative actions underway or planned in federal agencies.”

After service members landed pay raises over 4 percent for three years in a row—including a 14.5 percent bump for junior enlisted in April—the Trump administration is calling for a 3.8 percent raise starting Jan. 1, 2026. Other benefits, like the tax-free housing allowance, are valued at an additional $85,700 per person for enlisted troops and $146,100 for officers in 2026, the White House said.

The Defense Department is expected to publish more specifics later this month on how it would spend $892.6 billion in discretionary funding next year.

US Bombers Step Up Combat Operations as Demand Grows

June 9, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

U.S. bomber units are stepping up the pace of combat operations and overseas training as demand for their capabilities grows around the globe, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command said June 5.

“We’ve seen . . . an unyielding demand signal” for each of the Air Force’s three bomber fleets in the past 18 months, Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council. In some cases, units are dispatched to fly with a foreign ally for “a month or a week,” he said. Other times, an immediate response force deploys with no prior notice.

The Air Force deployed bomber task forces 33 times in 2024, including 10 each in the Indo-Pacific and Europe; six in U.S. Central Command’s jurisdiction, which includes the Middle East and southwest Asia; and several others in North and South America, Bussiere said.

Bomber units have linked up with air forces from Australia, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Romania, Spain, and Sweden. Some deployments involved round-trip missions, in which they flew from the U.S. and back to participate in overseas training exercises without landing en route.

“Our allies and partners love integrating with our bombers,” Bussier said. They “love having a bomber showing the American flag over their country, or integrating with their air forces, or exercising with their ground forces.”

All three types of bombers—B-1s, B-2s and B-52s—struck targets in Yemen or the Red Sea within the last year, though Bussiere wouldn’t directly comment on those missions. In October, for instance, B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, struck five hardened underground weapons caches in territory controlled by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The bomber force has been called up on no-notice activations seven times in the past 18 months, Bussiere said.

“Four or five of them were for combat,” he said. “Two of them were for integration and messaging.”

Six B-2s deployed for several weeks to Diego Garcia, a strategic island outpost in the Indian Ocean, for the small B-2 fleet’s largest and longest overseas deployment so far.

“The combatant commander wanted that capability and capacity in theater, and we generated those bombers, and . . . pushed them out” to CENTCOM for combat missions, Bussiere said.

The operations demonstrate the “capability [and] capacity of long-range strike, payload and range,” Bussiere said. Bombers can hit targets from farther away and use heavier munitions than other platforms.

“I’m a little bit biased, but bombers just send a different message around the world,” he added.

Bussiere also predicted that there will be another new long-range, stand-off strike platform before the B-52 retires, and said the Air Force has long eyed defenses against the kind of drone strike Ukraine used to destroy Russian bombers earlier this month.

The B-52H, he said, continues to be a crucial part of the bomber force. The type is undergoing a “very complex modification” to a new standard configuration, dubbed the B-52J, Bussiere said. The J-model includes replacement of the engines and their pylons, the radar, as well as the communications and navigation systems and other elements of the 63-year-old bomber. The Air Force hopes to keep the B-52s flying for at least 25 more years, a century after they joined the inventory.

Bussiere acknowledged the B-52J has hit development snags, Bussiere said. The cost of its radar upgrade surpassed its baseline by at least 15 percent, triggering a so-called Nunn-McCurdy breach that spurs the Pentagon to investigate and revise a program.

“The modification schedule, cost and production of the radar are different than originally designed when the program started years ago,” he said. But he insisted it’s “not a critical” cost or schedule problem.

“The command has worked very hard to keep the program costs under control” to continue modernizing the radar, he said.

In its nuclear role, the B-52 is designed to fire cruise missiles from afar. It carries the 50-year-old AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile, but that is to be replaced by the AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff Weapon around 2030. The secretive LRSO will likely continue flying on a long-range strike platform that follows the B-52 when it retires, Bussiere said, adding that the development program is going well.

The new B-21 Raider bomber is also expected to carry nuclear-tipped air-launched cruise missiles as it begins operations by the end of the decade.

Are Bombers Secure?

Bussiere said the Ukrainian drone strike that destroyed at least a dozen Russian bombers June 1 was unsurprising. “That capability and that threat has been evident,” he said, bringing together officials from the Air Force, U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Strategic Command to discuss the threat “probably at least once a month.”

“We are upgrading our capabilities and capacities every day,” he said of counter-drone tools. “The Department [of Defense] is focused on it.”

But he believes the strike’s success will likely push the Air Force to become “a little more aggressive in . . . addressing those types of threats in the continental United States.”

The U.S. military has sought technology that can identify and disable or destroy drones for years. While industry has come up with ways to shoot down quadcopters, confuse them, or zap them with lasers or microwaves, the U.S. has struggled to create cohesive counter-drone policies to protect military and civilian airspace. One hurdle: bringing together the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Homeland Security and various military entities to jointly address the problem.

The government keeps its likely counter-drone solutions under wraps, Bussiere said, “both to protect our fixed bases as well as our mobile operations.” The Air Force meets with companies to discuss potential options every month.

The threat is real, he said.

“We’re . . . going to respect it, he said. “We’re going to develop capability and capacities and operational techniques to defeat that.”

House Appropriators Offer Air, Space Forces $261 Billion in 2026

June 9, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Absent a full defense budget request from the White House nearly six months into President Donald Trump’s tenure, lawmakers are taking matters into their own hands.

House appropriators on June 9 took the unusual step of unveiling an $831.5 billion defense funding measure, even before the Trump administration has said how it intends to spend the money. The legislation includes $228 billion for the Air Force and $29 billion for the Space Force. Last week, another House appropriations subcommittee also approved nearly $4 billion for military construction across the two services.

If passed into law, the Department of the Air Force would receive $261 billion from the House—a slight uptick from the $257.1 billion Congress provided the Department of the Air Force in 2025. It is also roughly equal to the topline amount the Trump administration had indicated it would seek for 2026.

Not all the funds earmarked for the Department actually end up supporting Airmen and Guardians. About 20 percent of the Department of the Air Force Budget each year passes directly to other federal agencies, largely the National Reconnaissance Office, a defense intelligence agency whose missions are tightly linked to the Space Force. It is not yet clear how much of this “pass-through funding” is included in the draft legislation.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the defense appropriations subcommittee chairman, said in a release that the proposal is part of a “historic commitment to strengthening and modernizing America’s national defense,” combined with another reconciliation bill to deliver $1 trillion for defense in 2026 for the first time ever. Lawmakers aim to send both the core defense spending bill and its military construction companion on to the full House by the end of the week.

Capitol Hill normally takes its cues from the executive branch. So while Washington has grown used to unorthodox budgeting, with Congress typically failing to pass funding legislation until well after a fiscal year starts, appropriating funds before a budget is submitted is an entirely new twist.

“Unprecedented,” wrote Byron Callan, a long-time defense analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, wrote in his June 9 newsletter. “DoD has not sent Congress a complete FY26 budget request, only an appendix to the ‘skinny budget.’”

The appendix, released by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget May 30, outlined $261 billion in funding for the Air Force and Space Force as well. But it stopped short of including line-by-line details of how those billions would be spent, for instance, on weapons buys or bonus pay. OMB has promised to publish those specifics later this month.

“I know the process to this point has been a little non-traditional, but it is important that we do our jobs as appropriators and get moving on this critical legislation,” Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who chairs the military construction subcommittee, said in a June 5 news release. “As this process unfolds and we receive further budget documentation, we will take it under consideration including those proposals aimed at improving efficiencies.”

A committee summary of the House defense spending bill offers more insight into how the sum might be doled out.

Lawmakers would boost spending on procurement for new air and space systems and for development of military space projects, but they would shrink funding for the personnel and operations-and-maintenance accounts across both the Air Force and Space Force.

The defense spending bill supports the Air Force’s major programs, including the F-35 Lightning II, the next-generation F-47 fighter, and the B-21 Raider bomber, according to the summary. Lawmakers also backed the 3.8 percent military pay increase proposed by the White House.

The bill also shields the C-40 executive airlift fleet from retirement, protects the Air Force Reserve’s “Hurricane Hunters” unit while allowing its Airmen to take on other missions outside of hurricane season, and blocks the Space Force from absorbing the National Reconnaissance Office.

$3.9 billion for missile warning and tracking systems

$2 billion for 11 national security space launches

$1.8 billion for satellite communications upgrades

$680 million for two new GPS satellites

$360 million for GPS enterprise upgrades

$7 billion in classified space programs

They would block, however, the Air Force’s plan to retire F-15 fighters and the high-flying U-2 reconnaissance plane, retaining those aircraft until the service has replacements in hand. The package directs the Air Force to restore three U-2s at a cost of $55 million. The Air Force, arguing the aging planes are no longer viable in a peer competition, had intended to rely on surveillance satellites for digital photos rather than the Cold War-era U-2s.

The House bill also includes:

$8.5 billion for 69 F-35 fighters, including $4.5 billion for 42 Air Force jets, and another $2.2 billion for continued development

$3.8 billion for B-21 bomber procurement, plus another $2.1 billion for development

$3.2 billion for F-47 fighter development

$2.7 billion for 15 KC-46 tankers

$1.8 billion to develop a new Survivable Airborne Operations Center jet

$500 million to continue research on the E-7 airborne target tracking plane

$483 million for the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile

$474 million for two EC-37B electronic attack aircraft

As for the Space Force, lawmakers would put $4.1 billion toward pulling the service’s programs into the sweeping “Golden Dome” missile-defense vision championed by Trump. The smallest military branch would also receive:

Appropriators are pressing the Pentagon to find $7.8 billion in potential spending cuts, and they codified in their bill nearly $4 billion in savings identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.

Democrats on the committee cited those cust as amounting to up to 1 percent of defense programs across the board, including $2 billion apiece for personnel and readiness. The cuts would not affect intelligence activities.

Callan said the changes could target operations and maintenance spending and hurt acquisition.

“We don’t see offsetting investment funds added to make a smaller DoD workforce more productive,” he wrote. “While attractive in concept, these sorts of cost savings could potentially slow DoD program oversight and contracting.”

Neither the House Appropriations Committee nor the White House responded to requests for comment about how lawmakers settled on the dollar amounts included in the bill or whether they match the Pentagon’s forthcoming request.

Other lawmakers are growing impatient with the hold up on spending legislation, one of Congress’s core responsibilities. With only 115 days until the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1, this may be the longest Congress has ever had to wait for an annual defense funding blueprint from the executive branch, noted Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine are scheduled to appear before both House and Senate appropriators this week to discuss the 2026 budget.

‘Kill More, Die Less’: New Unit Explores How to Deploy Wingman Drones

June 9, 2025 | By David Roza

The Air Force has launched a new unit dedicated to figuring out how to use wingman drones in tandem with manned aircraft over future battlefields.

It’s an upgrade for the Experimental Operations Unit, which has operated as a detachment of the 53rd Wing since 2023. On June 5, the wing formally elevated the unit to sit on par with other operational squadrons at a ceremony at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

“This is a pivotal moment for our force,” 53rd Wing Commander Col. Daniel Lehoski said in a press release. “The EOU embodies our commitment to rapid innovation and ensuring our warfighters have the most advanced tools to dominate the future battlespace.”

The Collaborative Combat Aircraft program aims to provide the Air Force with “affordable mass,” dramatically expanding the number of aircraft and missiles the combat fleet can put in the air without risking additional lives.

Pilots aboard F-35, F-22, and the upcoming F-47 fighters could manage a handful of CCAs equipped with electronic-warfare tools to disrupt air defenses, for example, allowing the manned jets behind them to slip into enemy territory. In that spirit, the motto scrawled across the bottom of the EOU’s unit emblem is “Kill More, Die Less.”

cca combat — Col. Joshua M. Biedermann, left, 53rd Test and Evaluation Group commander, passes the unit guidon to Lt. Col. Matthew W. Jensen, inaugural commander of the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU), during the EOU activation ceremony at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, June 5, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Michael Sanders)

The drones are among the Air Force’s top acquisition priorities and underscore the growing role of autonomy in combat. Still, Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, the Air Force’s force design director, said in January that the service will keep the jets’ level of autonomy relatively simple to build them faster.

“What we thought was going to be this requirement for a great amount of autonomy and a significant amount of artificial intelligence, and really, really complex algorithms,” he said, has turned out to be instead “frankly, simple autonomy, simple algorithms, a little bit of AI sprinkled in.”

“We’ve been able to decrease pilot workload to a degree where they can really, really effectively utilize these capabilities,” he said.

Last month, the Air Force announced that two CCA prototypes had begun ground testing ahead of a first flight planned this summer. The two CCAs are the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A—the first unmanned aircraft in the Air Force inventory to receive a fighter designation. Production of as many as 200 of the autonomous aircraft is supposed to be underway by 2028; CCAs are slated to join the fighter fleet by the end of the decade.

The Air Force is still developing its concept of operations for CCAs, which is where the Nellis unit comes in. According to the release, the unit will test and refine human-machine teaming for CCAs in realistic scenarios.

“We are here to accelerate the delivery of combat-ready capabilities to the warfighter,” EOU commander Lt. Col. Matthew Jensen said in the release. “Our experimental operations will ensure that CCA are immediately viable as a credible combat capability that increases joint force survivability and lethality.”

Nellis is well-equipped to handle that mission: The base is home to a major training range as well as hosts a branch of the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center, where joint and coalition partners can simulate future air battles. The unit expects to fly real-world experiments to verify simulated results and further refine its tactics.

F-35 Contracts Slip in Delay Unrelated to Radar Woes

June 7, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Funding to build the next two batches of F-35 fighters, originally expected to be finalized by the end of June, won’t be awarded to Lockheed Martin until sometime this summer, the jet’s Joint Program Office told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The delay is unrelated to challenges with the fighter’s new radar that are reportedly prompting the contractor to consider redesigning the jet’s fuselage, the JPO said.

With the end of the second quarter approaching, the JPO said it is “on track to definitize Lot 18-19 in summer 2025,” when it will provide more details of the agreement with Lockheed. The JPO plans to award a deal for the two lots together.

The JPO and Lockheed reached a handshake deal on Lot 18 last November, saying that a definitized contract detailing the total number of airplanes and the cost of each variant would arrive this spring.

In December, an update to an existing contract covered an additional 145 F-35s, valued at $11.8 billion, as part of Lot 18. The award included 48 F-35As for the Air Force, 16 F-35Bs and five F-35Cs for the Marine Corps, and 14 F-35Cs for the Navy. It also covered 62 F-35s for foreign militaries and support for production facilities in Italy and Japan.

The JPO said it initially planned to finalize Lot 18 first and exercise an option for Lot 19 later due to lack of funding.

“However, since Congress passed a full-year continuing resolution before finalizing Lot 18, the program can now exercise the Lot 19 option alongside Lot 18 definitization,” the office said.

A government official said that although nailing down a contract in late spring was the goal for several months, “as the teams work through the final phases of pricing and terms and conditions, it is now clear that additional time will be needed to complete the necessary DOD and [Lockheed Martin] reviews.” In the meantime, work is moving forward under the December award.

The contracting delay is “not related to radar,” the JPO said.

Lockheed has informed the Air Force that the schedule for adding a new APG-85 radar to the F-35 faces “risks,” and that the jet’s forward fuselage may be redesigned to accommodate current and future radars, Breaking Defense reported June 5. The APG-85 was supposed to be installed on F-35s slated for delivery this year as part of Lot 17.

Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet told Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin in a March 21 letter the company is taking steps to design a new fuselage in time for Lot 20, Breaking Defense reported. The new fuselage would work with either the F-35’s current radar, the APG-81, or the larger APG-85. Both radars were developed by Northrop Grumman.

It’s unclear whether the redesign would require more extensive testing of the stealth jet’s radar signature.

The JPO declined to comment on a possible radar delay. It told Air & Space Forces Magazine only that “the APG-85 is planned for initial fielding in Lot 17.”

The APG-85, the JPO said, “will be compatible with all variants of the F-35 aircraft” and able to defeat “current and projected adversarial air and surface threats.” It called the inclusion of the new radar “a key capability development in response to the increasing capabilities” of adversaries.

The JPO called the current APG-81 radar “already the best in the world.” It declined to comment further, citing security concerns.

Northrop announced it was working on the APG-85 in 2023. At the time, the JPO said the radar was “modernized to be the top-of-the-line radar available today, ensuring American dominance in the air.” Northrop has described it as a “multifunction sensor,” but the JPO has refused to elaborate on what that means for the F-35.

“We do not disclose technical information on operational capabilities,” the office said.

Industry officials have said, however, that new active electronically scanned array radars can function not only as sensors to detect enemy aircraft and map terrain, but can also be used for electronic warfare or even communications or cyberattacks.

F-35s are the centerpiece of the U.S. fighter fleet, used as flying supercomputers to assess the surrounding area, relay information to other forces and attack.

The program is slated to cost $2.1 trillion over nearly a century, including to purchase almost 2,500 aircraft and the costs of operating and upgrading the jets, funding related personnel, running repair depots, and foreign investment. Lockheed has delivered nearly 1,200 Joint Strike Fighters to militaries around the globe so far; 20 countries have signed onto the program.