Three F-16s that flew in defense of Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, will be retired and preserved as museum artifacts.
Heather Penney
In June 2026, airpower experts from the U.S. Air Force, seven allied air forces, and industry convened for a three-day wargame designed to stress notional 2036 USAF combat forces in a series of concurrent crises: a Russian assault against NATO...
The Airman’s imperative to defend from small uninhabited aerial vehicles. The air base has become a central target set. Small drones have become one of the defining air threats of modern warfare, representing a structural change in the character of...
Guard, Reserve Concerned About Fighters By Todd South AURORA, Colo. Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve leaders warn that the Air Force must modernize their fighter fleets along with the Active force, or they risk losing combat-tested talent and...
When the U.S. attacked Iran’s nuclear development facilities in June, more than 130 fighters played a crucial supporting role. But the seven B-2 stealth bombers—flying direct from the U.S. heartland—were indisputably the heart of the operation, each delivering two monster conventional bombs designed to penetrate ...
AURORA, Colo.—Air & Space Forces Magazine caught up with Heather Penney, former F-16 pilot and now a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, at the AFA Warfare Symposium to break down the biggest developments from Air Force...
Fixing the Air Force’s chronic combat pilot shortage will require more aircraft in the fleet, more flying hours to squadron operations, and retaining more pilots within Reserve components, according to a new paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
William LaPlante said there’s been “significant improvement” in the program over the last decade, and program leaders can now “focus on the future of the F-35, instead of the past.”
There are breakthrough capabilities promised by quantum technologies that experts say could give the U.S. Air Force crucial advantages in a future conflict with China—provided, that is, that the U.S. military invests in developing those technologies sooner, not later.
The Department of the Air Force awarded a three-year, $2.5 million contract last week to Quantum Research Services, a small firm affiliated with Purdue University, for what they say is the Pentagon’s first ever “operational, production-level quantum computing software.” The software will focus on supply chain ...
For the U.S. Air Force to maintain its kill chain advantage, it must evolve its kill chains to counter adversary strategies to break them.
China has structured its military to defeat the U.S. “kill chain”—the sequence of steps needed to spot and destroy particular targets—and the Air Force must now ensure its process is agile and resilient, largely by investing in new platforms and networks, an expert from the ...