DOD Personnel by the numbers: Total Force; end strength and manpower trends; breakdowns by sex, rank, region, command, Air Force Specialty Codes, and more.
defense
USAF & USSF Global Installation Locator 2026
Gallery of Weapons
U.S. Air Force Wings 2026 147 active-duty wings · Click any card for details There are 147 Active-duty wings in the U.S. Air Force. There are 37 wings in the Air Reserve and 90 wings in the Air National Guard....
A non-exhaustive list of acronyms and abbreviations found in the 2026 Almanac.
Awards and Decorations Shown in order of precedence.
CCA’s AI Pilots Step into the Spotlight By Greg Hadley AURORA, Colo. Just one year ago, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) took center stage as then-Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin designated the two competing jet prototypes as the first...
How two F-16 pilots survived a Houthi SAMbush. About 15 seconds separated F-16 “Wild Weasel” pilots Lt. Col. William “Skate” Parks and Maj. Michael “Danger” Blea from life or death in the night skies over Yemen. Along with multiple B-2...
Raytheon, a division of defense giant RTX, recently announced a multiyear deal with the Pentagon to increase annual production of the Air Force’s primary dogfighting missile by more than 50 percent from two years ago.
How a rogue planning cell engineered the most decisive air war in modern history.
We love letters! Write to us at letters@afa.org. To be published, letters should be timely, relevant and concise. Include your name and location. Letters may be edited for space and the editors have final say on which are published. Blending...
Golden Dome is one of the most ambitious defense projects ever mounted. It seeks to develop a missile defense shield for the entire continental United States (CONUS) against ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile threats and to defend against air and UAV threats. To be an ...