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.

Air Force Ready to Deploy More Nukes Once Arms Control Treaty Ends

June 6, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak and Rachel S. Cohen

The Air Force is ready to add more nuclear warheads to its bomber aircraft and underground missiles if ordered to do so when a key arms control treaty expires next year, its top nuclear officer said June 5.

Air Force Global Strike Command boss Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, during a discussion of the U.S. strategic arsenal hosted by the Atlantic Council, said that when the New START Treaty ends in February 2026, “there may be a direction to provide additional capacity, both on the land leg and the bomber leg.”

“If directed, we are ready and prepared to execute” that order, he said. “We have the capability and capacity to do it.”

Bussiere also talked about the likely need for more than 100 stealthy, long-range B-21 Raider bombers, and the expansion of America’s nuclear force in response to the rise of new nuclear powers.

New START, which entered into force in 2011, limits the number of launchers—like a plane, submarine or missile—with nuclear warheads that can be deployed by the U.S. and Russia. The 400 deployed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles were designed to carry three warheads but use only one apiece to comply with the treaty.

Global Strike periodically test-launches the missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), which would each carry a nuclear warhead in a real attack. It most recently did so in November from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

A spokesperson for the command said that just because the Air Force could put missiles with multiple warheads on alert if no longer bound by a treaty, that doesn’t mean it will. The Air Force could also put more nuclear weapons on its B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress bombers if funded and directed to, the spokesperson said, but “specific postures and plans would be directed by the National Command Authority,” comprised of the president and defense secretary.

The U.S. and Russia in February 2021 agreed to extend New START for five years, but Russia announced in 2023 that it didn’t intend to continue the deal past 2026.

Until February, “we are encumbered by the restrictions and limits” of New START, Bussiere said. “There is no follow-on arms control.”

Modernizing Missiles

As the end of New START draws closer, efforts to deploy a new generation of nuclear weapons face fresh criticism in Washington. Among them is the Sentinel ICBM, which would replace Minuteman III missiles and can also carry multiple warheads.

The Pentagon found last summer that the troubled initiative was over budget by 81 percent, for an estimated cost of nearly $141 billion, and delayed by three years. The Air Force is restructuring the program to avoid future cost overruns that could trigger additional congressional oversight and slowdowns.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on June 5 pressed Air Force officials to show they’re taking the Sentinel program seriously. The new ICBM is the program that has occupied the most of his time since becoming secretary last month, Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink said. It’s one of his top three priorities, he said, if not the highest.

“We’re doing everything we can to get it back on track,” he said.

Bussiere said the so-called Nunn-McCurdy breach was largely spurred by the costs of building Sentinel launch facilities and command-and-control infrastructure—effectively, the sheer scope of the civil engineering effort. While the program remains delayed by up to two years, he said, other aspects of the program “are ongoing and going well.”

“I’m encouraged by the activities that are going on right now between industry, our ops and maintenance professionals, and the acquisition professionals,” Bussiere said. “We are seeing some great opportunities in the restructure of the program.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) questioned why the service has moved $1.2 billion provided for the Sentinel program to fund other priorities in fiscal 2025, and said he’s concerned the new missiles won’t be ready in time to replace the Minuteman IIIs before they’re too old to be effective.

At the Atlantic Council event, Bussiere said Global Strike has a “very deliberate plan” for keeping enough Minuteman III missiles available to meet the minimum number needed for deterrence while transitioning missile launch facilities and control centers to the Sentinel program. It is “a national imperative” to keep Minuteman III functional until Sentinel can replace it, he said.

This is only the second time the U.S. has sought to replace its nuclear enterprise, and the first since the 1980s. Global Strike is now juggling the complex and expensive ICBM modernization at the same time as it brings on the B-21 to replace the B-1 and B-2 bombers, a new air-launched cruise missile and other pieces of the strategic arsenal. That challenge will “take an effort and a lift from everybody,” Bussiere said.

“If we had to do it again,” Bussiere said, “we might look at maybe doing one leg [of the nuclear triad] every 10 years, versus all three legs at the same time.”

He hinted the U.S. may need a more robust nuclear force structure to counter future threats. Since 2010, China has become a near-peer nuclear power to the U.S. and Russia and is continuing to bolster its strategic arsenal, while North Korea has also built up its nuclear forces. North Korea is receiving nuclear missile guidance know-how from Russia in exchange for sending troops and other aid to Russia for its war against Ukraine, Bussiere said.

In February, President Donald Trump said he wants to pursue arms control talks with Russia and China and bemoaned the amount of money the U.S. plans to spend on new weapons.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected in April that operating and modernizing U.S. strategic forces will cost $946 billion through 2034; other estimates reach $1.5 trillion over the systems’ lifetimes. Proponents of the effort argue keeping other nuclear-armed nations at bay is worth the price.

Asked June 5 to respond to Trump’s comments, Secretary Meink told lawmakers nuclear deterrence is one of the highest priorities for America’s national defense.

“I have never and do not believe that I disagree with the president on anything,” Meink said at the House Armed Services Committee hearing. “I think we’re supporting his priorities, which is, support the homeland. And this is one of the programs that we will use to support the homeland.”

Growing the Bomber Force

The rise of other nuclear powers has revived the question of how large America’s nuclear arsenal, particularly its bomber fleet, should be. Bussiere maintains the Air Force can most easily accommodate growth in its bomber force, which can also be used for non-nuclear strike missions.

The Air Force plans to buy at least 100 B-21s, which cost around $692 million apiece as of 2022. But the service is “starting to see a number of combatant commanders, a number of members of the [Defense] Department, as well as Congress, asking the question, ‘Is 100 enough?’” Bussiere said.

The idea of boosting the buy to 145 B-21s is “predicated on an earlier threat,” he said.

“We need to explore . . . what the right number is,” Bussiere said. “The good news is, I think we have time to make that decision.”

The massive Republican-led tax-and-spending package under consideration on Capitol Hill includes $4.5 billion to ramp up B-21 production at Northrop Grumman and expand its supplier base.

The Senate version of the bill would allow the Air Force to spend the money only on aircraft that are made possible by greater production capacity. The B-21’s production rate is a closely held figure, but may be as low as seven or eight airplanes per year.

“If Congress gives us the additional money, then it’ll be a decision from the Department of Defense and the Department of the Air Force, with the Secretary’s direction, to get the contractor to ramp up that number,” Bussiere said.

If the Air Force opts to buy more than 100 B-21s, officials will explore whether to house more Raiders at its three main bomber bases or if other bases should host the planes, Bussiere said. The B-21 is slated to arrive first at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, followed by Whiteman AFB, Missouri, and Dyess AFB, Texas.

Despite the rapid advance of autonomous aircraft, Bussiere said he does not expect there will be an autonomous nuclear bomber program in his lifetime, insisting that committing to the use of nuclear weapons is “a human decision.” Under the original B-21 contract, however, Northrop Grumman is required to make the B-21 usable without humans on board.

Space Force’s Only Guardian-Astronaut Reflects on Journey from Jets to Space

June 6, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Last year, Space Force Col. Nick Hague—about to become the first active-duty Guardian to launch into space—was thrown a curveball. After 18 months of training to lead a four-person crew, he was reassigned as the commander of a two-member mission: to return two astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station.

For just a couple of weeks, Hague and his crewmate, Roscosmos astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, intensely trained to return Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule—without having flown the spacecraft before. Hague described the difference between the 1960s-era Soyuz and the modern Dragon, outfitted with advanced automation, as “night and day.”

His team launched in September and worked alongside the other two astronauts on the orbiting station for six months. In March, all four safely splashed down off the coast of Florida.

“If you look at my spaceflight history, everything is a surprise. It’s full of ups and downs,” Hague said, reflecting on his 12-year career as an astronaut.

Lessons from Orbit

Hague represents the growing partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Defense Department as the U.S. enters a new space race. Guardians have more to learn from civil space, and can offer their own unique military perspective in return as world powers compete for dominance in the cosmos, Hague told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a June 4 interview.

Hague has been candid about his bumpy road to NASA. He applied to the civilian space agency three times and was rejected twice over the course of a decade before finally earning the symbolic astronaut wings in 2013.

“The year that I got selected, there were some 6,000 people that applied, and they picked eight,” Hague said. NASA chooses new astronauts who offer the right set of skills, but also who meet the stringent medical and physical standards in place to minimize the chance of complications arising during a mission.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague poses next to the BioFabrication Facility inside the Columbus laboratory module during his first mission on July 29, 2019. Picture by NASA.

Being an Airman or Guardian offers some advantages in the intense competition to join the astronaut corps—many astronauts first serve as military test pilots. NASA prioritizes a balance of experience and diverse perspectives. The job requires being quick on your feet and good with your hands, as maintenance comprises much of the work on orbit.

“You train for the nominal about 5% of the time, and then you spend 95% of the time training for everything that’s going to go wrong,” Hague explained.

His career began as an Airman flying F-16 and F-15 fighters, plus T-38 training jets, along with a five-month deployment to Iraq.

That military experience enhanced his value with NASA, because so much of that experience was applicable. “It gave me a lot of opportunities that I’m not sure I would have been afforded if I hadn’t served in the military,” Hague said. “In a stressful environment, can you perform? Are you adaptable?”

His background proved essential during his first mission in 2018, where he launched alongside Roscosmos astronaut Alexey Ovchinin. Less than two minutes into the flight, the Soyuz rocket’s booster malfunctioned while the rocket was traveling at 4,000 miles per hour.

“All of a sudden, there’s a violent side-shake, a light’s flashing, and the alarm’s going off,” Hague recalled. With automated systems guiding their separation from the booster, they reentered Earth’s atmosphere from 50 miles up and landed safely in Kazakhstan.

He flew again on the Soyuz only five months later, spending 203 days on the ISS conducting a wide range of experiments. All told, the Guardian has spent about a year in orbit.

“Everything changes. The gravity’s not compressing my spine, so it straightens out and decompresses a little bit, and I grew an inch and a half to 2 inches on orbit,” Hague said. He also had to adjust how he perceives direction, relying on visual cues since there’s no gravity to tell him which way is up.

During his subsequent time on orbit, his research work has ranged from sequencing DNA to identify microbes sampled from the station, to studying how stem cells behave in microgravity. During his previous assignment, the colonel also worked on 3D-printing human tissue and editing genes to explore new ways of treating diseases. He also volunteered blood samples to help scientists understand how and why spaceflight suppresses the immune system.

“You raise your hand and say, ‘I’m going to be the guinea pig, and you can do your experiments on me,’” he said.

For these astronauts, returning home isn’t the finish line. Hague spent two months rehabilitating his body to recover from the effects of space, including having grown more than an inch, a typical effect of living for months in a zero-gravity environment. It takes time to readjust to carrying one’s own weight on Earth and to become accustomed to gravity’s effect all around.

Col. Nick Hague at AFA’s Air & Space Warfighters in Action on June 4, 2025. Photo by Jud McCrehin, Air & Space Forces Association

Talent Exchange

The military has contributed talent to America’s civil space program from the beginning. The first astronauts were all Air Force, Navy, and Marine aviators, and Hague follows that tradition. Uniquely, however, he is the first Space Force Guardian to launch beyond the atmosphere as a Guardian. Col. Michael Hopkins transferred from the Air Force to the Space Force on the Space Force’s first birthday in December 2020.

The Space Force tracks some 47,000 objects in orbit, including satellites and space debris, and alerts space system operators, including NASA, when there is a risk of collision. NASA relies the Space Force’s GPS system for orientation and position, just as other operators do and the Space Force oversees launch operations.

“While I’m up there, I constantly got this umbrella of protection,” Hague said of the Guardians monitoring space domain awareness. The ISS orbits the Earth at 17,500 mph. “I don’t launch to space without the Space Force; I can’t operate my station without the Space Force.”

The Space Force likewise benefits from NASA research. In April, Space Systems Command partnered with NASA to send six experiments to the ISS. The research focuses on space radiation detection, studying lightning in Earth’s atmosphere, and testing space weather conditions. These experiments will stay on the ISS for a year, with data collected to boost the Space Force’s capabilities to protect satellites and improve their reliability.

“There are many ways that we are trying to figure out and actually taking advantage of this cross-pollination,” Hague said. “The skills necessary to operate and perform those two missions share a lot in common.”

For long-term joint training, NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s payloads office integrates Defense Department research aboard the ISS. The select Guardians who get assignments with NASA bring back that experience and exposure to its culture, operations, and best practices.

“You’re going to learn a ton while you’re there,” Hague said. “It’s also about how we find opportunities for NASA engineers and civilians to be able to participate in learning how the Space Force does what it does, so they can bring lessons back to NASA in the other direction. That cross-pollination is a big focus.”

With NASA’s continued mission on the ISS and its ambitions to return to the Moon and beyond, will future Guardians get to follow in his footsteps?

“The skills that make you effective to do the Space Force mission . . . are very applicable at NASA,” Hague said. “You’re doing, on a daily basis, things that NASA is doing, but you also bring this different set of experience and background. . . . That could make you a really attractive candidate.”

Turning Qatari Jet into Air Force One to Cost ‘Less Than $400 Million’

June 5, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Transforming a former Qatari royal jet into President Donald Trump’s new Air Force One will likely cost less than $400 million, the U.S. Air Force’s top civilian told lawmakers June 5.

“Those are classified, sensitive capabilities that we put on the platform,” Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. “But . . . we believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is actually probably less than $400 million.”

That price tag is far lower than the roughly $1 billion Democratic lawmakers have alleged modifying the Qatari jet would cost. Most of that figure consists of money the Air Force would spend anyway, such as for training assets and spare parts, Meink said. He declined to discuss details of the retrofit in public.

It’s the first time an Air Force official has publicly stated how much money retrofitting the Qatari plane to meet the needs of an American president could cost U.S. taxpayers.

Qatar agreed to gift Trump the jet for free after Trump approached the Middle East ally about selling the plane this winter, according to news reports. But The Washington Post reported May 28 that an Air Force inspection found the jet was “very poorly maintained” and could require $1.5 billion to prepare it to fly the commander-in-chief.

The Air Force is in charge of overhauling the plane because it oversees the portfolio of executive airlift jets that carry America’s civilian and military leaders around the world. To transport the president, jetliners require significant upgrades to defensive and communication systems, as well as other changes to accommodate regular travel with a sizable staff and press corps.

L3Harris is working with the Air Force to modify the Qatari plane, CNBC reported last month.

Though the Pentagon announced May 21 that the military had accepted the Qatari airframe and would move forward with the retrofit, The Washington Post reported that the two countries were still hashing out the legal terms of an agreement to transfer the luxury plane. The White House has said the royal plane will be ready to fly as Air Force One while Trump is still in office.

Congressional Democrats have decried the jetliner as an illegal bribe and introduced multiple bills to deter the transfer or block it outright.

The U.S. military is already in the process of bringing on two new planes that would serve as Air Force One when the president is onboard. Those jets, known as the VC-25B in military parlance, will replace the pair of modified Boeing 747s that have ferried American presidents since 1990.

The Air Force purchased a new set of aircraft—unused Boeing 747s abandoned by a bankrupt Russian airline—for $3.9 billion in 2018 after Trump criticized the cost of the replacement effort and went in search of a better deal. But Boeing has repeatedly stumbled, amassing $2.5 billion in losses amid significant delays that pushed Trump to seek another option.

“They had to strip those planes that were built for another purpose down to the studs,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said at the hearing. “The contractor who was doing the interior work went out of business, and Boeing had to figure out a plan to do the fitting out of the interior of the plane.”

Now the Air Force estimates the new fleet won’t be ready until fiscal 2027 at the earliest—three years later than first expected, Darlene Costello, one of the service’s top civilian acquisition officials told lawmakers May 7.

Hoping to hit that date, the Air Force is considering paring down the requirements that the new airframes must meet to begin flying, Costello said without elaborating. It also temporarily loosened some of the security rules at the Boeing production facility to move work along.

“We’re down to a few remaining issues that we have to work through,” said Costello, then the Air Force’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics. “We will hope to close that in the very near future.”

While Meink said he can’t guarantee the pair of planes will be delivered in 2027, “we are doing whatever we can to pull it back.”