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.”

What Defense Tech Firms Can Learn From Formula One

June 5, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

Excitement about self-driving taxis and small autonomous drones is exposing a dividing line between systems that operate at relatively slow speeds and the increasing challenges posed by systems operating at the speed of war. Government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton is looking to Formula One car racing to gain a combat edge for autonomous military vehicles.

“Doing autonomy slowly is something that we’re getting better and better at,” Bill Vass, the company’s chief technology officer, said June 3. “Autonomy at speed is very hard. . . . Whether it’s an aircraft or a missile or an autonomous vehicle, on the battlefield, you have to move fast.”

Booz is partnering with computer-chip maker NVIDIA to help develop autonomous Formula One race cars for Code 19, a startup. So far, the self-driving race cars have failed to match expert human drivers. But at the AI+ Expo in Washington, D.C., Vass and others argued that the Air Force and other military services will gain a lot from the effort to develop autonomous F1 cars.

Eric Breckenfeld, director of technology policy for NVIDIA, said the speed and other engineering challenges the project is targeting are outside the problems mainstream automotive manufacturers are focused on.

No one at commercial self-driving companies is incentivized to test how autonomous systems operate at 150 miles per hour, nor are they subjecting self-driving computers and chips to the extreme temperatures or intense vibration produced at those speeds.

Like military operations, car racing is confined to “relatively low-volume, relatively customized systems” and “relatively cost-insensitive customers,” Breckenfeld said.

Both also present “austere conditions, extreme circumstances of speed or vibration or temperature, and a ‘failure is not an option’” mindset.

But because autonomous racing is not a national security issue, Booz, NVIDIA and their partners could draw on a much wider talent pool and engage with a much wider range of potential suppliers and collaborators.

“It’s really useful,” he said, “to pull on all that volume, engage on surrogate problems, solve those out there” in the unclassified space.

Motor sports have long been testing grounds for the automotive industry; overland and other high-endurance races push hardware to new limits of tolerance, said Lawrence Walter, co-founder and CEO of Code 19. Now it’s filling that role for the software that powers autonomous vehicles, too.

“In competitive teams, where you’re racing against the best in the world, every ounce of performance matters, and the speed that you can extract . . . from the machines and from your software is critical,” Walter said.

Formula One race cars are already loaded with sensors, Walter noted. In addition to cameras and speedometers, they generate enormously detailed performance data for every element of the vehicle.

“In theory, with all that data, you should be able to perform better than a human that’s just driving by the seat of their pants using their intuition,” Walter said. “But . . . we haven’t been able to achieve that.”

Like highly skilled fighter pilots, Formula One drivers who start racing at a young age have an edge: “Their control algorithm, all of the skills that they actually employ in operating the vehicle, is instinctive to them,” he said.

In racing, there is a mathematically correct “optimal raceline,” a route around the track which, in theory, should produce the fastest lap time. “But when . . . you put an expert human driver driving that same track, the mathematical optimal race line is not actually what gets you around the track fastest,” Walter said.

Code 19’s AI development has used human performance as a baseline so the computer can model its driving on real racers.

Vass said imbuing AI with those almost instinctive, “seat-of-the-pants” skills is one of the hardest problems autonomy engineers have confronted.

The variables are many, Vass told Air & Space Forces Magazine, citing tire temperatures as just one area of complexity. Each time tires are changed during a race, the driver is placed at an disadvantage—until the tires heat up. “When your tires are cold, you can slide a lot, and it’s very scary,” said Vass, who has a Formula One license. “It’s very unpleasant—at least it was for me.” But skilled drivers know how to adapt and have techniques to heat up the tires faster.

“The autonomy has to be able to handle that as well,” he said. “It has to know that it’s got cold tires, and it’s got to know . . . how to heat the tires up fastest, because whoever can heat the tires up faster again is going to have better lap times.”

Programming autonomy requires engineers to understand all of the variables.

“How do you pass that to an AI agent?” Vass asked. “How do you get that human capability into the autonomy? That’s true in flying the jet, that’s true in the battlefield, that’s true in driving a tank. And so that’s where we have to connect the dots.”

The Air Force is betting big on autonomous systems, including self-flying fighters and scores of drone wingmen that can partner with manned aircraft, to act faster than humans alone and to multiply its forces. Last year, then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall boarded an AI-powered F-16 fighter known as the X-62 VISTA to see for himself whether Airmen could trust the technology.

He climbed out of the cockpit, grinning.

Air Force 3-Star Nominated as NATO’s Top Officer

June 5, 2025 | By David Roza

An Airman with years of experience overseeing air operations in the Middle East is next in line to lead NATO forces as the top U.S. military official in Europe.

Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich is nominated for promotion to serve as the four-star head of U.S. European Command, the Pentagon announced June 5. If confirmed by the Senate, Grynkewich would also assume the title of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO’s top military officer, amid the bloodiest conflict on the continent since World War II.

The North Atlantic Council, made up of representatives from each member nation who make political decisions for NATO, has approved the nomination. Grynkewich is expected to step into the role this summer, the alliance said in a June 5 release.

He would replace Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, who has held the dual role since July 2022. Grynkewich is set to be the fifth Airman in the post since Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was nominated as the first SACEUR in 1950. U.S. flag officers have served as SACEUR at the alliance’s main military command center in Belgium ever since.

The European Command boss leads about 84,000 U.S. troops at more than 40 bases across the continent.

Grynkewich would take over at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe at a critical moment for the transatlantic alliance. Russia’s looming threat has spurred NATO nations to hike defense spending and cooperate with new urgency as Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine — which borders four alliance members — continues into its fourth year. Ukraine does not belong to NATO.

Gen. Carsten Breuer, Germany’s defense chief, told the BBC earlier this week he believes Russia could attack NATO by 2029. His prediction comes as the U.S. plans to begin discussing the potential withdrawal of American troops from Europe with its allies on the continent later this year.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is urging member nations to invest further in defense, particularly on munitions, as the U.S. turns its focus to the Pacific.

Grynkewich currently serves as the Joint Staff’s operations director. From July 2022 to April 2024, he worked at the heart of U.S. military action in the Middle East as commander of Air Forces Central. That included overseeing airstrikes against Iranian proxy groups, protecting ground troops, and helping Israel defeat a massive Iranian drone and missile attack the night of April 13, 2024, just a few days before handing over command to Lt. Gen. Derek C. France.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime,” the F-16 and F-22 fighter pilot told Air & Space Forces Magazine last year about his AFCENT time. “I’ve learned and grown as a leader myself in this position, and wouldn’t trade the experience for anything else.”

Grynkewich is the third flag officer and the second Airman nominated this week to lead one of the Pentagon’s 11 combatant commands around the globe. On June 4, President Donald Trump nominated Lt. Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, to lead U.S. Africa Command. Anderson would become the first Airman in that role if confirmed.

Top NATO Official Says All Members May Hit Spending Target After 11 Years

June 4, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Eleven years after NATO pledged to spend at least 2 percent of each country’s gross domestic product on defense, “most, if not all” 32 of the alliance’s member nations are poised to reach or surpass that goal in 2025, Secretary-General Mark Rutte said June 4 at a ministerial meeting in Brussels.

NATO’s non-U.S. members will now be assigned “capability goals,” based on the role each country is expected to play in European defense, Rutte said. Those targets will be rolled out in three weeks at NATO’s full meeting at The Hague.

Rutte did not reference a reported plan to increase the contribution goal to 3.5 percent, or the 5 percent that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urged at the NATO ministerial in February.

“At this ministerial, we are going to take a huge leap forward,” Rutte said at a June 4 press conference. “We will strengthen our deterrence and defense by agreeing [to] ambitious new capability targets,” he said, but to do so, “it’s clear that we will need significantly higher defense spending.”

“That underpins everything,” he added.

The U.S. spent 3.4 percent of its GDP on defense in fiscal 2024, down from a historical average of 4.2 percent. POLITICO reported June 4 that 23 of NATO’s 32 members are on track to spend at least 2 percent by this summer.

It’s “only fair” that the non-U.S. NATO nations increase defense spending, Rutte said, acknowledging that the U.S. is pivoting its focus to security in the Pacific.

“We have to . . . equalize with the United States,” he said. While NATO is “extremely important” to America, Rutte added, the U.S. is “so big and powerful” that it logically must concentrate on other military theaters. He said the U.S. does not plan to withdraw from Europe.

The sharp increase in defense spending is necessary, Rutte said, because the Russian threat “is there for the long term,” and despite its economic difficulties, Russia is “producing four times more ammunition than the whole of NATO.”

Purchasing munitions should be the alliance’s top priority, he argued, no matter how politicians decide to fund it.

“I only need to make sure that, collectively, we have what we need to prevent us from taking Russian language courses,” he said.

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the multinational effort to provide Ukraine with the weapons, vehicles and funds to prevail in its ongoing war with Russia, German defense minister Boris Pistorius called contributing 5 percent of GDP to defense “unrealistic.” Gradually increasing spending to hit that target is “possible and certainly needed” in light of the war in Ukraine, he said, but it would be a struggle to achieve that goal quickly—especially for smaller NATO allies.

Pistorius said the proposal will be discussed at the NATO summit later this month.

“It’s not about disappointing anybody,” he said. “It’s about negotiating . . . what is necessary and what’s possible.”

Germany announced after the meeting it will provide $5.7 billion worth of aid to Ukraine, focused on ammunition and air defense systems. The United Kingdom pledged $5.1 billion, of which $400 million will be used to build drones. Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden also pledged new aid to Ukraine, including ammunition, drones and naval equipment.

Rutte said that non-U.S. NATO members and European Union members have pledged “20 billion euros for Ukraine . . . in the first three months of this year,” versus 50 billion euros last year.

He did not detail how countries will share responsibilities under the new allocation of roles, but said the top priorities include “air and missile defense, long-range weapons, logistics, [and] large land-maneuver formations.”

“We need more resources, forces and capabilities so that we are prepared to face any threat, and to implement our collective defense plans in full,” he said.

The U.S. has long assumed the greatest responsibility within NATO for long-range aviation and aerial attack, while Germany has provided the bulk of ground troops and electronic attack. The U.S., U.K., and France have provided the lion’s share of naval forces, and other countries have filled in the remaining capabilities. In recent years, however, NATO’s dramatic expansion has meant that non-U.S. countries are bringing on far greater frontline aviation and air defenses, with many more fifth-generation F-35s than the U.S. will station in Europe. Poland’s ground forces rival those of Germany, and newer, smaller NATO allies have niche capabilities in logistics and special forces.

The need for greater NATO spending is made clear by “Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, the threat of terrorism, and intense global competition,” Rutte said. The alliance this week will “assess the gaps we have in our collective defense,” he added, to ensure NATO’s protection against Russia and China “not only today, but also in three to five years.”

Also on the table are a renewed investment in “infrastructure and resilience,” Rutte said, as well as a push to build munitions production capacity.

Rutte, echoing U.S. defense officials and associations that have said companies need to see strong demand to invest in greater weapons production, said the plans for increased funding are about “making sure . . . that our defense industries will put in extra production lines, extra shifts.”

Rutte praised the Trump administration’s efforts to “stop the bloodshed” in Ukraine and achieve “a just and lasting peace.” He said NATO’s efforts to support the beleaguered country, which Russia invaded unprovoked in 2022, are about ensuring Ukraine’s self-defense and preventing further aggression on the continent, not prolonging the war.

“Putin should never, ever try this again,” he said of the three-year-old invasion, “and that means we have to test him” and sit down to regional peace discussions.

“The U.S. is taking the lead on this, and I’m really glad that they do that,” Rutte said.

Asked if he believes the U.S. is solidly backing Ukraine—Hegseth skipped this contact group meeting—Rutte said the U.S. “is completely committed to NATO; completely committed to our joint endeavors when it comes to Ukraine, there’s no reason to doubt that.”

“Most of these meetings take place in Europe, so it will not always be possible for U.S. officials to participate in every meeting,” he added.

It’s the first meeting of Ukraine’s roughly 50 military benefactors at the U.S.-run Ramstein Air Base in Germany that a U.S. defense secretary will not attend, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“We are at a pivotal moment for our security,” Rutte said. “Make no mistake, NATO is strong today, and we will become even stronger. Strong defenses send a clear message: No one should ever think of attacking us.”