Trump Says US Halting Military Campaign Against Houthis

May 6, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. will halt its stepped-up campaign of airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen, President Donald Trump announced May 6, citing promises from the rebel group that it will stop attacking commercial shipping lanes.

Dubbed Operation Rough Rider, the campaign against the Houthis has drawn on U.S. Navy and Air Force warplanes and drones in the region, which have hit 1,000 targets and killed hundreds of Houthi fighters since it began March 15, according to the U.S. military. The strikes were ongoing as of May 5, defense officials said, and the Israeli military bombed the Houthis on May 6 for the second day in a row in retaliation for a Houthi ballistic missile strike on Tel Aviv’s airport, the Israel Defense Forces said.

“We will stop the bombing of the Houthis effective immediately,” Trump told reporters.

Following Trump’s comments, Oman’s foreign minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi said his country had brokered a “ceasefire agreement” which “resulted in an end to the conflict between the two sides.”

“In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping,” he wrote on X..

The Houthis issued a statement saying they would continue their pressure campaign against Israel. U.S. officials suggested the agreement did not apply to Houthi attacks on Israel.

“This is about the Red Sea, the attacking of ships,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.

A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet flies in formation with a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker over the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, April 5, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Gerald R. Willis

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was traveling to CENTCOM’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla., on May 6, reposted Trump’s remarks on X. “PEACE THRU STRENGTH in action,” he added in a later social media post referring to the agreement.

The Pentagon referred questions about the agreement to the White House. The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s surprise announcement, made from the Oval Office during a bilateral with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, came just a few hours after open-source intelligence analysts noted flight tracking data and radio communications showing U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers heading to over the Pacific Ocean in the direction of Diego Garica, a small island in the Indian Ocean. Six B-2 bombers deployed to Diego Garcia in late March and have been launching strikes on Yemen. It is unclear if the B-52s were deploying to join the campaign against the Houthis or if the move was part of a preplanned Bomber Task Force rotation.

The aircraft carriers USS Harry S. Truman and USS Carl Vinson are both operating in the waters near Yemen in a rare show of force. F-16s from the 55th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, based at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., deployed to the region last month, joining other Air Force fighters, attack planes, and bombers in the region.

At least six MQ-9 Reapers have been lost during the current campaign against the Houthis that started March 15. On May 6, after the ceasefire had been announced, a Navy F/A-18 crashed off the deck of the Truman while attempting to land—the third Super Hornet lost from the carrier during its deployment. Both aviators in the aircraft suffered minor injuries after ejecting, the Navy said. The Pentagon said the aircraft was not shot down by the Houthis.

During the U.S. strike campaign there have been allegations of scores of civilian casualties by the Houthis and nongovernmental groups, which CENTCOM has said it is investigating.

The Houthis have been attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait since late 2023 in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The Houthi attacks have hit commercial ships, leading to a large drop-off in shipping in the Red Sea, which connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, forcing commercial traffic to reroute around Africa.

“This was always a freedom of navigation mission,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in the Oval Office. “These are a band of individuals with advanced weaponry that were threatening global shipping, and the job was to get that to stop, and if it’s going to stop, then we can stop.”

The U.S. military engaged in a long military campaign against the Houthis under the Biden administration, and Trump stepped it up even more, including attacks against Houthi leaders.

Trump said the Houthis have communicated to the U.S. that they “don’t want to fight anymore … we will honor that and we will stop the bombings.”

“They have capitulated … they say they will not be blowing up ships anymore,” Trump said.

Inside Orbital Watch: USSF’s Neighborhood Watch For Space

May 6, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The launch last month of Orbital Watch, the new Space Force program to share declassified U.S. government threat intelligence with private sector satellite operators and other commercial space companies, comes amid increasing concern about Chinese and Russian development of anti-satellite weapons.

Officials said the program will eventually become a sort of Neighborhood Watch for space—a clearing and distribution house for orbital threat data from both the government and private sector.

Experts welcome the idea of Orbital Watch. But they also told Air & Space Forces Magazine that it will likely highlight a dearth of information about objects in space and how they are maneuvering—known as space domain awareness data—available to commercial space operators, and foreground the highly siloed nature of current U.S. government efforts to collect SDA data and other threat information.

“There is a highly distributed ecosystem of people looking at space threat issues right now” in the U.S. government, said Gregory Falco, an assistant professor at Cornell who has worked with DARPA on the topic. He said different agencies or offices in different parts of the government are looking at different threats like:

orbital collisions—called “conjunctions”—both accidental and otherwise

cyber attacks on satellites and ground stations

jamming or electronic warfare

Those efforts are not always connected, complicating efforts to share threat data even within the government, let alone outside it, he told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

He added there was a need to “integrate these data streams and figure out how to begin to engage with other partners more holistically.” Right now, he said, “the relationships between the different parties who are looking at these problems are very one-to-one, and it doesn’t really help. There’s very poor visibility across the full ecosystem.”

Eventually, Falco said, Orbital Watch could become a very powerful tool, but he described the “initial operating capacity” Space Force announced of a quarterly threat briefing as more of a goodwill gesture to show the government’s commitment to the principle of threat information sharing, rather than a practical exercise, since the information in a briefing every three months is likely to be too outdated to be useful.

“The quarterly briefing is definitely more of a public relations slash goodwill exercise for [foreign and private sector partners], I believe, rather than for intelligence or real-time analysis,” he said.

Orbital Watch is run by Space Systems Command, the element of Space Force that buys and builds the service’s satellites, through its Front Door office, which aims to simplify and streamline the relationship with the private sector.

Within weeks of its launch, news broke that a classified Russian satellite, thought to be part of Moscow’s efforts to develop a counter-satellite nuclear weapon, was tumbling in its orbit, apparently out of control, illustrating the growing need for such a warning service.

The aim for Orbital Watch is to build a system to disseminate declassified or unclassified all-hazards threat information as broadly as possible, Front Door Director Victor Vigliotti told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“If it’s a threat to a commercial vendor operating in the space domain, we want to be able to communicate the unclassified information where and when available,” he said.

“I’d imagine that future notifications might include things like potential conjunctions, kinetic threats, cyber security threats, business intelligence and supply chain threats, as well as new and emerging adversarial development,” he added.

But he acknowledged that Front Door was still working with other agencies to figure out exactly what kind of data Orbital Watch would be able to share and with whom.

“We’re not in the process of developing and creating intelligence reports. We’re in the process of rapid communication from the original information owner and sending that out to who they determine necessary,” he said.

And he said those partner organizations fully control what information is released. They will have to decide what needs to be shared with the private sector and do the declassification work.

“Any organization that has information that’s releasable [about something that] could be a threat to a non-government system out there, we’re hoping to gather that, consolidate it, and disseminate it,” he said.

He said as the Orbital Watch program develops capability, the cadence of threat briefings will increase, although there is no specific target: “It is unknown as of now whether it’s going to be hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. But we can be sure it’s going to increase well beyond that current quarterly tempo, especially in times of crisis and contingency.”

By the end of the year, Vigliotti said, Orbital Watch should reach “full operational capacity,” which would include a portal where “commercial vendors deemed critical to space warfighting, especially those participating in the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve,” could share their own threat information to the U.S. government for anonymous dissemination across the sector.

This model, pioneered by the cybersecurity industry, could help Orbital Watch get over the barriers to sharing government threat information presented by classification issues, he said. “We could potentially leverage commercial [threat] data to share with other vendors and international partners, when we’re unable to sanitize U.S. government information in a timely manner.”

Although access to the portal to submit threat information would be limited, Vigliotti said, any space sector company, including foreign ones, would be able to sign up to receive Orbital Watch threat warnings.

“If you’re a space vendor, we want you in the Front Door,” he said.

Dissemination protocols are up to the agency that supplied the information, he said, but he noted that anything cleared for public release—as he envisaged most Orbital Watch threat data—is by definition shareable even with companies based in adversary nations.

“I would say, if there’s a Russian or Chinese company that wants to submit to the Front Door, please share your data with us,” he said.

A similar effort, called the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or Space ISAC, shares cyber and other threat information with the commercial space sector, and leaders of the public-private partnership organization say Orbital Watch will help build on their efforts.

Space ISAC is developing a 24-hour, real-time, all-hazards threat warning center for commercial space companies, using a paid membership model. But they don’t see Orbital Watch as a competitor, because their own capabilities are much more mature and growing quickly, said Executive Director Erin Miller.

“My view of any government-led information sharing program is that it’s going to be a collaborative opportunity with the Space ISAC, because Space ISAC is a multidecade approach from industry, and industry has already invested millions of dollars into the Space ISAC, and we’ve created a incredibly unique source of information for the global space community that really can’t be replicated.”

For now, Space ISAC is working closely with Orbital Watch and has Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) in place with the Space Force and several other government agencies, she said.

The organization was already sharing cyber threat intelligence on a real-time, machine-to-machine basis, she said, employing the STIX (Structured Threat Information eXpression) standard—a template which ISACs and other cybersecurity information sharing organizations can use to provide cyber threat reporting in a form that can be automatically ingested by cyber defense software like firewalls and endpoint protection programs.

STIX eliminates the need for human operators to cut and paste or retype technical indicators of attack from cyber threat warnings into firewall rules or other automated defensive measures.

Space ISAC is working on a special extension for STIX specifically designed for all-hazards reporting in the space sector, Miller said.

“We’ve been doing this work for about six years now, and I’m still of the strong opinion that the commercial sector resources to identify, detect, and monitor these threats and attacks significantly outnumber any government resources to do that. So we have to do it together,” she said.

Growing Space Force Needs More Enlisted, CMSSF Says

May 5, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force wants to grow its enlisted force faster than its officer corps, the top enlisted Guardian said May 5, part of a push to make enlisted personnel the service’s primary operators.

“Looking at the composition of the combat squadron, the combat detachment, the mission planning cells, the mission support elements, all of the functions of how we fight—and we look at the officer and enlisted roles and responsibilities—our enlisted Corps are the warfighters of the service,” said Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna during an AFA Warfighters in Action event.

The Space Force has a higher ratio of officers to enlisted members than other military branches, which is notsurprising given its high level of automation and tech-heavy focus. Indeed, in its first few years, the service actually had more officers than enlisted personnel. By 2024, the ratio was 48-52 officers to enlisted, more than double the 20:80 ratio typical of Army and Naval forces.

USSF will evolve, Bentivegna said, to where its officers are “planners and integrators,” while enlisted Guardians handle day-to-day operations and become technical experts.

“It’s going to take us a little bit to kind of shift,” Bentivegna said. “We’re still trying to round out what the service is going to look like, and get the right individuals in the right positions at the right jobs as we continue to grow.”

Space Force leaders have been increasingly vocal about the need to grow, driven by growing mission demands, including Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s directive that “space control” be a core function of the service, intended to ensure space superiority. That mission includes counter-space operations.

“I think most projected growth in the out years is primarily enlisted positions that we’re trying to grow, as we do this shift,” Bentivegna said.

“We talk about the growth in the space control mission set. Once we do that, it’s not like we can stop doing assured space access and global space operations,” Bentivegna said. “Those underpin the lethality of the joint force, so we have to continue doing those. It’s really growth in the space control realm to provide space superiority. And I think that’ll be a lot of enlisted Guardians who are subject matter experts on the weapons system.”

The need for enlisted technical experts means that even senior noncommissioned officers have to stay “operationally relevant,” Bentivegna added.

That’s a slight shift from the larger military’s typical approach, where senior NCOs are often trained to take on more management or leadership roles while warrant officers fill the roles of technical experts. But the Space Force has always been a more technical branch and is now the only service without warrant officers. Officials say they have no plans to introduce them.

Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna speaks to Guardians and Airmen during his all-call on Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, Feb. 28, 2024. Bentivegna discussed how important the cyber landscape is to the warfighting domain. U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Justin Todd

Right now, plenty of crews operating Space Force satellites have officers “on console” alongside enlisted Guardians. But the Space Force could logically use more of those officers elsewhere.

“A week doesn’t go by where in the [Pentagon] we get a phone call from a joint organization or combatant command, an ally or partner, a three-letter agency that says, ‘I am looking for a Guardian to be on my staff to help me do integration and planning and talk to me about Space Force capabilities and how do we become a more lethal force, leveraging the Space Force,’” Bentivegna said. USSF is looking to develop officers to fill those roles through its new Officer Training Course.

“As we’re pushing those captains out, I want to replace them with a master sergeant or a tech sergeant at the operational level, at the tactical level, to kind of fill those roles and responsibilities,” Bentivegna added. “We’re not there yet. It’s going to take a little bit to kind of shift and get the forces where we need them, but … I’m really excited with what the future holds.”

The Space Force’s civilian cadre likewise makes up a larger share—about one-third—of its total force personnel than the other services. So as the entire Department of Defense pursues job cuts to meet Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive to cut back on civilian personnel, the Space Force could face particular challenges. Still, Bentivegna said he had not been party to any discussion that would change the overall makeup of the Space Force toward or away from its current civilian/military ratio.

Hegseth Orders 20% Cut in 4-Star Generals and Admirals, Seeks Overhaul of Commands

May 5, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is directing the Pentagon to slash the number of senior generals and admirals, he announced May 5—at least 20 percent of four-star positions would be eliminated under the move. Hegseth also said he is directing a sweeping review of U.S. military commands and staffs, signaling a likely consolidation.

“[W]e must cultivate exceptional senior leaders who drive innovation and operational excellence, unencumbered by unnecessary bureaucratic layers that hinder their growth and effectiveness,” Hegseth wrote in a memo. “A critical step in this process is removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.”

Across the services, there are 27 four-star positions authorized by law, on top of joint positions like Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief and Vice Chief of the National Guard Bureau, and the heads of the military’s 11 combatant commands, for a total of more than 40 four-stars.

Hegseth did not say how the reductions would be apportioned among the services or how long it would take to carry out the cuts. He officially announced the move in a video posted to social media.

Introducing the “Less Generals More GIs Policy.” pic.twitter.com/bQLRL2MqSC
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) May 5, 2025

Some positions with Air Force generals are sure to remain untouched—the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, is an Airman, as is the current Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Steven S. Nordhaus.

Outside of joint jobs, the Air Force can have nine four-star officers, but currently has just seven. The Space Force has just two such officers.

The Space Force looks likely to escape cuts at the four-star level—by law, the Chief of Space Operations and Vice Chief of Space Operations must be four-star officers. The service also has a third four-star in Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, head of the joint U.S. Space Command.

Hegseth said in a video released by the Department of Defense that he was dubbing the policy “less generals, more GIs.” He suggested in his video announcement that many of the reductions would come from a consolidation of combatant commands, and the memo says there will be a “realignment of the Unified Command Plan,” which outlines the organization of those commands. Ultimately, he wants to decrease the number of generals and admirals at all levels—one star and above—by 10 percent.

Hegseth’s memo also directs the Pentagon to cut the number of general officers in the National Guard by a minimum of 20 percent.

“Now this is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers,” Hegseth said. “ … This has been a deliberative process, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff with one goal: maximizing strategic readiness and operational effectiveness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks.”

Hegseth said the cuts would take place in two stages. “Phase one, we’re looking at our current service structure, and in phase two, it’s a strategic review of the Unified Command Plan,” he said.

Under that plan, the services would need to trim positions in their own organizations first, before DOD reevaluates combat command positions. The Army has already suggested merging the heads of the Army Futures Command and the Army Training and Doctrine Command, and changes to other services could follow a similar path.

“We’re going to shift resources from bloated headquarters elements to our warfighters,” Hegseth said.

At the Pentagon, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin and a Vice Chief lead the service, though that position is currently vacant following the firing of Gen. James C. Slife.

The Air Force has multiple four-star officers outside the Pentagon, including the commanders of:

Pacific Air Forces

U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa

Air Combat Command

Air Mobility Command

Air Force Materiel Command

Air Force Global Strike Command

The Space Force offers fewer places to cut. Service leaders have been clear that they view themselves as having an under-ranked service compared to other branches. Most Space Force geographic component commanders are colonels—in the Air Force, those positions are held by three- or four-star generals.

Hegseth has reportedly considered combining or removing some combatant commands, such as possibly eliminating an independent U.S. Africa Command and combining U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command, though the Pentagon has not confirmed which commands could be on the chopping block. Associated jobs on the Joint Staff could get cut with a consolidation of combatant commands. Some combatant commanders are due to retire soon, including the leaders of U.S. Central Command and U.S. European Command, and it is possible positions could be unfilled for a period.

Some positions typically only go to one service. For example, Air Force generals typically lead U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Transportation Command.

“This is going to be, we think, the most comprehensive review since the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1983,” Hegseth said. “That was a generational change in combatant command structures, planning, training, geographic areas of responsibility, mission, and operational responsibilities.”

That move, however, was an act of Congress, not an edict from a Defense Secretary. It remains unclear how Congress will respond to Hegseth’s announcement, but some were quick to question the order.

“I have always advocated for efficiency at the Department of Defense, but tough personnel decisions should be based on facts and analysis, not arbitrary percentages,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement. “Eliminating the positions of many of our most skilled and experienced officers without sound justification would not create ‘efficiency’ in the military—it could cripple it.”

Reed said he was “skeptical of the rationale” and wants Hegseth to explain his thinking to lawmakers.

DOD Shows It Can Reuse Hypersonic Testbed, Setting Up Faster Testing

May 5, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Talon-A2 uncrewed hypersonic test vehicle made a second flight just three months after its first, demonstrating reusability and paving the way for a faster pace of hypersonic testing, the Pentagon announced May 5.

The boost-glide vehicle, built by Stratolaunch, and lifted to launch altitude by the Stratolaunch Roc six-engined, double-fuselage carrier aircraft, flew on an undisclosed day in March, the Pentagon said in a release. After flying over the Pacific Ocean and achieving hypersonic speeds—defined as in excess of Mach 5—the vehicle landed on a runway at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. The same vehicle flew a similar profile in December 2024. In recent years, uncrewed hypersonic test vehicles craft have splashed down into the ocean after exhausting their fuel.

Stratolaunch is providing hypersonic test vehicles and services to Leidos, the prime contractor for the effort.

The flight was part of the Multi-service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed program, or MACH-TB, being conducted by the Defense Department’s Test Resource Management Center.

“This test campaign marks the nation’s first return to reusable hypersonic flight testing since the manned X-15 program ended in 1968,” the Pentagon release stated. The MACH-TB effort “accelerates delivery of advanced hypersonic capabilities to the warfighter by providing DOD, other Federal agencies, industry, and academia the capability to affordably and rapidly conduct hypersonic experiments and test hypersonic system components.”

Stratolaunch’s Talon-A2 release and engine ignition for its first hypersonic flight. Photo courtesy of Stratolaunch

The program seeks to provide a high tempo of hypersonic flights at low cost, in order to test components such as materials, communications, propulsion, and other elements of hypersonic craft. It’s intended to facilitate the transition from ground testing to full-scale flight tests and uses a modular approach.

Stratolaunch said the vehicle “surpassed Mach 5 during its trajectory for the second time, exceeding the previous speed record set with the December flight.”

TRMC director George Rumford said in a statement that “demonstrating the reuse of fully recoverable hypersonic test vehicles is an important milestone for MACH-TB. Lessons learned from this test campaign will help us reduce vehicle turnaround time from months down to weeks.” The Pentagon did not say when it plans to fly the vehicle again.

“The success of this launch marks an important milestone for our hypersonic testing services,” said Larry Barisciano, Leidos’ aerospace systems lead.

“The program’s goal is to consistently and rapidly test various payloads to help the government assess technical readiness levels of advanced hypersonic capabilities. This launch serves as a testament to the speed in which Leidos could pull the program together, highlighting the agility Leidos provides for customers.”

Stratolaunch president and CEO Zachary Krevor said that “with the data collected from this second flight, we are able to apply lessons learned to enhance the strength and performance of the Talon-A vehicles. While the team needs to complete its data review of flight two, the first flight review confirmed the robustness of the Talon A design while demonstrating the ability to meet the full range of performance capabilities desired by our customers.”

Mark Lewis, president and CEO of the Purdue Applied Research Institute, advisor to Stratolaunch, and former deputy undersecretary of for research and engineering, hailed the importance of reusability in reducing the cost of testing.

“Because it’s a winged cruiser/glider, Talon also flies an envelope that’s more useful for categories of hypersonic vehicles versus sounding rockets,” Lewis said. Being able to recover a hypersonic vehicle is “extremely powerful,” he added.

In previous hypersonic programs, “we had flight tests with results that we’re still uncertain about. If we could have looked at the articles after flight, it would have been far more revealing. And of course, the ability to re-fly something is also powerful.”

Leidos was awarded the MACH-TB contract by Naval Systems Warfare Center Crane on behalf of TRMC, the Pentagon said. Kratos will perform systems engineering, integration, and testing on MACH-TB 2.0, under a January contract valued at $1.45 billion.

The TRMC is a Pentagon Field Activity under the undersecretary of Defense for research and engineering.

Stratolaunch’s Talon-A2 first autonomous landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Photo courtesy of Stratolaunch

Air Force, Space Force Brace For Wave of Civilian Staff Reductions

May 5, 2025 | By David Roza

The personnel chiefs for the Air Force and Space Force told lawmakers that plans to lay off thousands of civilian employees could present challenges to recruitment efforts and perhaps even operations, particularly for the Space Force.

“I will tell you, because we rely heavily upon the Air Force for support, and that the preponderance of our Guardians, military and civilian, are operationally-focused, this is going to be a challenge for us,” Katharine Kelley, deputy chief of space operations for human capital, told the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee in a hearing April 30.

Kelley’s comments came about two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a plan to reduce the Defense Department’s civilian workforce by 5 to 8 percent, part of a greater effort by President Donald Trump to reform the federal workforce. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), an Air Force veteran and ranking member of the subcommittee, said she worried such reductions mean that “we’re necessarily asking more of those who are in uniform or are left behind.”

Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, said she expects to lose about 12,000 Air Force civilians, roughly six percent of the department’s 186,000 civilian employees. Meanwhile, Kelley estimated that civilians make up about a third of the Space Force’s 17,000 members. She expects to lose about 10 percent of those civilians, which translates to about 570 people.

“The impact of losing civilians is exponentially hard on the Space Force because of the outsized impact of the total population,” she said. “We have to look very carefully about how to mitigate that 10 percent and how to be very, very intentional about making sure that that does not have a direct mission impact.”

Kelley’s concerns echoed those shared by top Space Force officials at the AFA Warfare Symposium in March. Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, the head of Space Systems Command, said at the time that a “considerable number” of civilian employees at SSC had taken the deferred resignation program (DRP) offered by the new administration.

It’s too soon to tell how the reductions will break down by pay grade or job specialty, an Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Batches of workers have requested DRP and voluntary early retirement options, but the Air Force is still working out how many of those might fall under policy exemptions.

Until then, the Air Force “expects near-term civilian employee reductions to affect all mission areas to some degree, while limiting reductions that directly support warfighter readiness and lethality,” the spokesperson said.

Probationary employees, meaning workers hired within a year or so ago and thus with fewer protections than their longer-serving colleagues, “will make up only a very small portion of the overall reductions,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, the Space Force reductions “have been proportionately distributed across the workforce based on both skill and tenure of civilian Guardians.”

Miller said she hopes all the resignations will be voluntary rather than mandatory through a reduction-in-force pathway, but she did say the reductions could chill recruiting, as candidates may feel “uncertainty about … whether or not you’ll be able to maintain that position.”

“As we continue down this road for the next several years, we just have to watch the second and third order impacts of ‘how is that going to impact recruiting?’” she said.

Miller’s fellow service personnel chiefs also expressed uncertainty about the reductions. Army Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler expects to lose about 16,000 employees, “which is significant,” but he said the Army is trying to make sure the departures do not impact the mission.

Marine Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte said about 1,600 civilians took the DRP offer. Navy Vice Adm. Richard Cheeseman Jr. did not have an estimate, but he spoke to the importance of Navy civilians.

“I can’t do my job without my three-star civilian equivalent deputy,” he said. “She did not take the DRP, good for me, but I am very concerned about my force development pipeline, how this will affect the schoolhouses and how it’ll affect our pay systems going forward depending on how that shakes out.”

Both the Air Force and Space Force are also complying with a military-wide civilian hiring freeze for all but mission-essential roles. The freeze has proven dirsuptive even for areas where exemptions were granted, such as child care, because delays have an outsized impact in areas where hiring was precarious even before the temporary pause took effect.

At the hearing, Miller said several civilians who trained child care providers took the first round of DRP, which, alongside other changes, has forced the Air Force to shift some of its workers and resources. That means the service may have to reduce the hours for some of its programs during the summer, a popular time for youth and child care activities.

Meeting the Software Challenge: Acquisition Reform Brings Its Own Complications

May 5, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

Editor’s Note: This is the final episode in a three-part series exploring the opportunities and challenges facing the Trump administration’s changes to how the Pentagon buys software. Part 1 is available here, and Part 2 is available here.

The new rules for buying software made mandatory by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s March 6 memo are designed to strip away constraints on how the DOD and the military services contract with private sector companies, so that they can buy, integrate, and deploy innovative capabilities more quickly.

But critics warn that the Software Acquisition Pathway, by clearing the way for faster, more agile acquisition, also removes safeguards imposed to prevent waste and abuse. In smoothing the path for a new generation of innovative software companies to contract with DOD and “disrupt” the defense industrial base, these critics argue, DOD risks creating a new generation of complacent incumbents.

“The reason why this [software acquisition reform] push is so well-championed by private industry is because it’s a vehicle to move money quickly with very few strings attached,” one recently retired Air Force technology and acquisition leader told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We have to be careful if we kill off those old kings, that we don’t just replace them with new kings.”

The retired officer, whose 20-year career included a stint as senior leadership at an Air Force technology accelerator, was granted anonymity because they fear retribution against themselves and their current employer for criticizing an administration policy initiative.

The software pathway, according to a guide produced by the Defense Acquisition University, frees software buyers from a series of constraints.

Normally, programs with an R&D budget of over $300 million or a total budget of over $1.8 billion are considered Major Defense Acquisition Programs. MDAPs are divided into phases and have to meet certain milestones and report them to Congress before they can move to the next phase.

Under the pathway, software programs are exempt from the MDAP process, according to the guide.

In return, pathway programs have to provide a minimum viable product—some capability to users in the field—within one year, a breakneck pace for military acquisition. They also have to commit to:

Updates once per year or more.

Using modern software practices like agile and DevSecOps.

Automating their testing and compliance.

The pathway also frees software programs from the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS), a process designed to vet requirements across the joint force.

“Instead of spending years writing detailed requirements and going through a rigid one-size-fits-all process,” a defense official told reporters at a background briefing on the Hegseth memo, “we can tap into the best tech available right now, prototype it fast and get it to the field quickly if it works.”

Another hailed the use of commercial solutions openings in the Replicator program, the Defense Innovation Unit-led effort to build cheap drones, saying they got three vendors on contract in just 110 days from issuing the original “problem statement” to industry.

“That is much faster than the traditional ways of putting out a solicitation and making those awards,” the official said.

The Relevance of Speed

Yet speed is a “dangerous” metric for software acquisition for a number of reasons, said the retired Air Force technology and acquisition leader.

“Speed is the metric where Silicon Valley measures its success: How fast can we get to market right? In the military it’s different. You can’t go out there with something that’s untested, where you think it’s going to work,” they said.

Moreover, speed as a metric “doesn’t tell you if anyone is actually using this stuff.” More useful metrics, they suggested, would be rates of user adoption and feedback about the user experience.

Ultimately, in the military context, they said, “the metric should be, does it work under fire? Does it have resilience under uncertainty? And if it does, then that’s a good candidate.”

Speed is also a potentially troublesome metric because it lessens focus on oversight, the retired acquisition leader said.

“Moving money and getting on contracts, I won’t lie about that: that’s hard to do, and getting on contract fast is important,” they acknowledged, adding that there are good people working hard in organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit.

But these faster mechanisms—often grouped under the term Other Transaction Authorities, or OTAs—can now be used for full-scale production contracts, not just for developing prototypes. “Hundreds of millions of dollars are going out that door,” the retired official said.

Maj. Gen. Luke C. G. Cropsey, who heads the Air Force Program Executive Office (PEO) for Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (C3BM), has said the service is already using the new authorities foot-stomped by the Hegseth March 6 memo—and he pushed back against the idea that the software pathway stripped away oversight.

“There’s still very much accountability associated with the expenditure of funds,” he said. “The contractor is accountable for delivering on the products.”

A senior defense official told reporters at a background briefing on the Hegseth memo that the ability to move from a prototype OTA contract to a production OTA contract is a “key enabler” for software acquisition, because it means an established weapons program can piggyback a prototype OTA by an innovation lab like DIU and issue a production contract for the technology that prototype has proven out.

“So, that’s a key element of these OTs is that you can prototype an OT and then a completely different organization can drop a production OT on top of that prototype OT,” the official said.

But that flexibility, combined with the low barriers to entry for a DOD marketplace like Tradewinds, the AI contracting clearinghouse run by the office of the Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO), could be dangerous, the retired acquisition specialist said.

The net effect, they said, is that companies with no history or demonstrated ability of delivering anything could get put on multimillion dollar, no-compete contracts at the complete discretion of the contracting officer on the basis of “a five-minute pitch video,” which is all it takes to enter the Tradewinds marketplace.

Defense officials told reporters at the background briefing on the Hegseth memo that they’re looking to combat that issue by requiring all OTAs and CSOs over $100 million to be approved by the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

‘Trilingual’ Expertise

Other critics are also concerned that the DOD workforce doesn’t have the skills they need to use the Software pathway.

Defense officials on the background briefing said they are moving to address the need for new skills from program managers and procurement officials.

One official said DIU, in partnership with the Defense Acquisition University, is running a training scheme called the Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program (ICAP). “We’re competitively select top performing contracting officers from across the Department of Defense to come and work with us at DIU and execute DIU service-aligned prototype projects. At the same time, they’re taking DAU courses, so they’re learning the textbook rules [and] regulations on Other Transaction Authority” contracts and other flexible acquisition tools, the official said.

Getting contracting officers into innovative programs is essential to spreading the knowledge of how to buy software better, said Cropsey: “You’ve got to build a pipeline that allows you to bring junior folks into these programs and actually get exposure earlier in their career to how to actually use and implement some of these [new acquisition] mechanisms,” he said.

But just training acquisition professionals to use new tools doesn’t necessarily equip them to buy software, explained Tate Nurkin, an Atlantic Council senior fellow and co-author of the recent report from its Commission on Software-Defined Warfare.

“We need people who are trilingual,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine at the report launch. They need to understand and know how to use the new acquisition tools, but they also have to understand the needs of warfighters in the field. Above all, he said, “they need to speak software” to know which questions to ask of contract engineers writing the actual code, Nurkin said.

The challenge, said Dopkeen, is to develop “software literate” acquisition professionals. “You have to develop software people the same way you develop acquisition professionals. You have to take people and you need to put them in good software environments, practicing coding and learning how it done.”

“There isn’t really any substitute for working on a major software project, and preferably more than one, even in a relatively junior capacity” for learning which questions to ask as the manager of such a project, Dopkeen said.

But more important than any training was the issue of cultural change, she said.

“Data and software are kind of like the backroom at the Defense Department,” she said. “Everyone wants to do things that go ‘boom’ and data and software is an afterthought.”

Trying to get software right in DOD, Dopkeen said, “you always feel like you’re almost a virus that the Pentagon body is fighting against.”

To fix the problem requires overhauling the culture of the military services, she said, giving as an example the way pilots tend to get the top jobs in any Air force program.

The litmus test, she explained, for predicting the success of the new F-47 fighter, will be “If it has a software person as the program manager and a plane person, a pilot, as their product manager.”

Beyond Acquisition

Another big issue, Dopkeen said, is that acquisition is not the only problem with the way the military uses software. Indeed, she said, the way the DOD has traditionally treated software is “the opposite of what they should have been doing.”

In commercial enterprise like Google, she said, codebases are not just updated, they are constantly being rewritten, a process called refactoring. “With Google Calendar, for example, they will design that product and let the team work on it for a year and then they’ll tell them to go back and completely rewrite it, design it again with new code, knowing what they do now.”

At DOD, by contrast, the attitude is, “because it works and has been certified, this becomes Holy Code that can never be touched again. And then you build on that for a decade and you end up with spaghetti code that is just a huge mess. And you are left with a huge attack surface,” she said.

DOD Chief Software Officer Rob Vietmeyer recently called these legacy systems “a boat anchor,” a huge drag on the department’s innovation efforts.

And it’s not a problem that can be solved by just changing the way the military buys things, said the retired acquisition leader, because the root causes go way beyond the acquisition system.

“There’s not really any off-the-shelf software running on DOD networks,” the retired official explained. “Unless you’re an external application, hosted somewhere else, all the software is modified” to meet security and other special requirements for DOD networks. “And that creates a lot of technical debt, because you’re maintaining two different code baselines: One for DOD and one for everyone else.”

In addition, although the pathway mandates the use of agile software development practices, in reality, there were many restrictions on the tools developers can use on military networks.

“Operating on the military network is really where a lot of the blockers are. The restrictions, the approved tools that you can use, they suck…. That is the main driver on why they can’t push updates.”

They said the focus on acquisition is well-meaning but ultimately inadequate.

”If you want to move fast, then let’s streamline the process of building software, let’s approve the tools that developers need on these networks. … This is a hard problem to solve, but if you really want to solve it, then you need to look in the right places,” they said.

Part 1 looked at how the Air Force is embracing the new Software Acquisition Pathway. Part 2 probed the origins of the Software Acquisition Pathway as part of an acquisition reform movement in DOD.

Meeting the Software Challenge: How the Air Force Is Embracing New Acquisition Rules

Meeting the Software Challenge: How the New Acquisition Pathway Came to Be

Air Force Eyes Less Class Time, More PT at Basic Training

May 5, 2025 | By Matthew Cox

Air Force training officials are planning changes to Basic Military Training that could take trainees out of the classroom more often to better prepare them for the rigors of modern warfare.

Beginning in the fall, 2nd Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Wolfe Davidson plans to introduce a new curriculum for boot camp that will focus on training Airmen and Space Force Guardians in much smaller groups, while replacing some classroom instruction with a more hands-on learning approach.

Training officials are also looking at increasing daily physical fitness training and adding exercises designed to mimic combat tasks.

Davidson, who oversees BMT and follow-on technical training, is tailoring the effort to match both Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive to restore warrior ethos in the ranks, and the service’s new initiatives to prepare for competition with the likes of China and Russia.

“How do we make sure that Airmen show up with the warrior ethos and understand their role in a high-end fight, not just in a fight, but in a high-end fight. … For us, that starts at Basic Military Training to kind of create the mindset that we would then build throughout technical training, Davidson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Trainees assigned to flights 100-103 participate in Mask Confidence Training at the 319th Training Squadron, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland-Chapman Training Annex, Texas, Dec. 19, 2024. During week four of the Department of the Air Force Basic Military Training, trainees go through an eight-hour Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense Orientation Course.

Davidson said he began to review BMT in August to figure out if it is preparing trainees for the current threat environment and how it fits into new Air Force operational concepts like Agile Combat Employment and Combat Wings.

“Then the new SecDef’s guidance that came out on [warrior ethos] … just really put the fuel behind this as it continues to move ahead,” Davidson said.

Air Force officials have actually been talking about promoting a “warrior” mindset dating back to the mid-2000s, saying then it was to better prepare Airmen to operate in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the years, the concept of warrior ethos has been often misunderstood, said Davidson, who comes from a Combat Controller background.

“So people would think you were a warrior because of what you did–so, you know, do you carry a weapon and are you close to the enemy?” Davidson said. “But in actuality, that’s not what we’re trying to create with a warrior ethos. What we’re really trying to create is the understanding of why you do the things that you do. … It doesn’t matter what you do. It matters why you do it, and the reason that you do it is to defeat an adversary.

“So it’s about creating that mindset and changing this concept of, ‘well, I’m not the person pulling the trigger, so I’m not really a warrior,’ to ‘what is it that I do that’s going to contribute to our success’ as that basic guiding principle.”

The Air Force has already rolled out some changes to BMT for “great power competition,” the term officials use to describe a potential fight with China or Russia.

In late July, trainees were issued non-firing, inert M4 carbines to carry throughout BMT to improve weapons proficiency. Senior Air Force officials had intended to transition to actual firing M4s, but Davidson said such a change is likely not necessary since trainees have already shown improvement in their weapons handling skills.

“We are seeing more proficiency with the weapon; they are more comfortable with the weapon,” Davidson said. “Handling that weapon helps you visualize yourself more as a warrior in creating that ethos.”

Then in March, the Air Force extended the 36-hour field exercise at the end of BMT to 57 hours. Primary Agile Combat Employment Range, Forward Operations Readiness Generation Exercise, or PACER FORGE, is designed to simulate how Airmen would deploy in small teams and operate from remote or makeshift air bases to make it more difficult for adversaries to target them.

To expand PACER FORGE, training officials trimmed some BMT training activities such as drill and ceremonies practice and dormitory inspections, Davidson said. “We had to buy those hours,” he said. “We have not extended basic training, and right now, we do not have plans to extend basic training to buy the extra time.”

The next step, Davidson said, will come with a restructured BMT that’s designed to ensure trainees embrace an “air-minded” focus on how they fit into the broader mission of delivering combat power from a small, remote air base or space base.

“And this is what is unique about the Air Force, so the Soldiering is in the Army and in the Air Force, it’s about how do you generate that airfield, how do you generate aircraft? How do you get weapons on it and fuel in it, and how do you keep the runway going under attack? How do you defend the perimeter?” Davidson said.

To do that, the new BMT will focus on teaching trainees to operate in “12-15 person teams” instead of “flights” that average about 50 trainees, Davidson said, adding that he also intends to get trainees out of the classroom environment and immerse them into more scenario-based training.

“Some of the courses that we do today are very classroom-based; we’re going to go to a learner-centric model, so much more … experience as a small team experiential learning,” Davidson said. “So learning … the foundational competencies of what it means to be an Airman in a different way, meaning, use them in the exercise-based, scenario-type training, as opposed to more classroom.”

Training officials are also looking at ways to increase physical fitness training in BMT, said Chief Master Sgt. Whitfield Jack, the senior noncommissioned officer for the 737th Training Group.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna takes part in the Airmen and Guardian run at Joint Base San Antonio, Tx., Feb 26, 2025. The event was part of a basic military training graduation ceremony for Airmen and Guardians. U.S. Air Force photo by Andy Morataya

“So as we speak, we’ve got a human performance team and some physicians that are actually looking over our PT program … because we’re trying to get back to physicality, Jack said.

Currently, trainees do an hour of fitness training per day, but training officials are discussing going to 90 minutes, “trying to do more pull and push foundational PT versus just a standard pass the PT test” training.

This is all in the discussion phase, Jack said, explaining that there are no plans to change the current Air Force PT test in BMT.

“Basically, we’re trying to get our Airmen and Guardians prepared for, if they’re out in a deployed environment, ’Can you pull something? Can you push? Can you put something over your head? Can you bend down and squat and pick something up?’ … more litter carries and pulling rope and things like that,” Jack said.

Lt. Col. Robert Chance, commander of 343rd Training Squadron that oversees security forces technical training, said ensuring trainees are more physically fit will strengthen their warrior mindset.

“Realistically, when times get tough, the more physically fit and resilient these folks are, the more mental capacity that they’re going to have,” he said. “And so that that’s where we’re really at is just really focusing on making sure that the training we’re doing is hard and realistic, so that when the first time these young folks face adversity and are challenged is not when it counts.”

The goal of all of these possible changes to BMT is to create a mindset in trainees that is adversary-focused rather than specialty-focused, Davidson said.

“So the very first step of why it is so important for us to build this warfighting approach or warrior ethos in our Airmen is that they can’t show up on base and think that they’re a fuels guy or a personnelist, right?” Davidson said. “They got to show up on base and figure out, all right, I have a role in this that’s broader, and it’s focused on the adversary.”

New CCA Unit at Beale Won’t Be ‘Schoolhouse’ to Teach Pilots to Fly with Drones

May 3, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force announced this week it is creating a new kind of organization—called an Aircraft Readiness Unit—to provide Collaborative Combat Aircraft for combat operations. Yet that announcement is just one of the “early steps” of operationalizing the semi-autonomous drones, with many more to come, a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The ARU is not planned to be a schoolhouse where fighter pilots can come to learn how to manage the drones, which will to fly alongside manned platform and be controlled by them. The unit’s manning will also be “an order of magnitude” less than traditional remotely-piloted aircraft squadrons, the spokesperson said.

Beale Air Force Base, Calif., is the “preferred location” for the ARU, meant to “provide combat aircraft ready to deploy worldwide at a moment’s notice.” In its announcement, the Air Force noted that because CCAs are not crewed, they will “not have to fly a significant number of daily sorties to maintain readiness. They will be maintained in a fly-ready status and flown minimally,” so the number of Airmen needed to support the fleet “will be substantially lower” than for other weapon systems.

Asked if the unit will be flying CCAs to forward locations where they’re needed or whether they’ll be transported in crates for reassembly and operations, an Air Force spokesperson said “we are still developing the tactics, techniques, and procedures for employing CCA. Due to operational security, specifics on this will likely not be releasable in the future.”

The spokesperson added that the unit “is not a schoolhouse,” but will simply provide CCAs for operational use. The CCA is “a new concept for an airborne weapons systems, and CCA units will be different from traditional flying squadrons. We expect to have more information in the future.”

Air Force and industry leaders have said experiments show fighter pilots can manage up to six CCAs with relative ease.

Anduril Industries YFQ-44A drone prepared for ground testing. Image courtesy of Anduril

There has been debate in recent years whether CCAs will be integrated with fighter units or have their own organizations, and the Air Force seems not to have resolved that debate yet. Asked if the establishment of the ARU means that the question has been settled, the spokesperson did not directly respond, saying the declaration of Beale as the preferred location for the ARU “is one of many early steps in the process to formalize the organizational structure of the CCA program.”

The Air Force declined to provide target dates for standing up the unit, how many aircraft will constitute initial operational capability, or when that will happen.

“Due to operational security, the specific timelines for standing up this unit are … not available at this time,” the spokesperson said. The CCA unit “will not follow the traditional model of more aircraft equals more personnel. CCA require fewer hours and sorties to maintain operational proficiency and are designed to simplify and reduce maintenance actions. The reduced personnel requirements are an order of magnitude lower than traditional fighter or RPA units.”

Given how early it is in the introduction of CCAs, “there is much to learn” about them, and the Department of the Air Force “has not yet determined the total fleet size,” the spokesperson said. “However, the DAF is committed to fielding an operational CCA capability before the end of the decade.”

The spokesperson also said it is still too early to say whether the ARU will have a formal association with a particular Active, Reserve, or Guard unit, though “we expect more information on this to become available in the future.”

Though the plan is for Beale to host the ARU, the Air Force’s reference to it as the “preferred” location means that environmental impact assessments and other processes must be completed before it can be confirmed as the new home of the CCA mission.

As part of its ARU announcement, the Air Force also disclosed that the two contenders for the CCA program, Anduril Industries YQF-44A and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems YQF-42A, have begun ground testing ahead of flights this summer. One of these two candidates for Increment 1 of the CCA program is expected to be selected for production after October. The service plans to produce at least 200 Increment 1 CCAs at a cost of $27-$30 million, with the first available for operations circa 2028-2030.

The Air Force also plans to choose final competitors to develop Increment 2 in 2026, but those aircraft are expected to be less sophisticated, and may be air-launched, as opposed to Increment 1 CCAs, which require a runway for takeoff and landing.