Sustained Munitions Production and Lower-Cost Designs By John A. Tirpak Munitions have long been a bill-payer in the Air Force budget—staples of warfare that, in peacetime, can be neglected or shortchanged to pay for more pressing needs—but after more than...
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Space Superiority Takes Center Stage By Greg Hadley Looking into the future in 1957, then-Maj. Gen. Bernard A. Schriever predicted that “in the long haul, our safety as a nation may depend upon our achieving ‘space superiority.’” Now,...
Allvin Makes the Case for More Airpower It’s all about ‘more options for the President,’ CSAF says. By Chris Gordon Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin dialed up the intensity of his calls for “more Air Force” in...
The Trump administration arrived in Washington promising to restore America’s military, reinvigorate deterrence, and bring back its warrior ethos. These are not things that can change overnight, but there is evidence of progress. Topics that were gingerly avoided six months...
Why retiring the B-1 too soon could undermine U.S. security. The U.S. Air Force plans to start retiring the B-1 Lancer fleet to make room for the new, sixth-generation B-21 Raider. But the Air Force is planning to do that...
Combat airpower requires more planes and more pilots to fly them. The U.S. Air Force is stretched thin by unrelenting rotational and contingency response demands, and its chronic pilot shortage just won’t go away. For more than a decade, the Air...
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. Danger,...
As the U.S. Air Force awaits the E-7, Airmen keep the E-3 flying.
War Plans … “The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might...
The F-47: Next Generation Air Dominance Boeing Wins Contest to Build the Next Manned Fighter. By Chris Gordon and John A. Tirpak When President Donald Trump announced March 21 that Boeing would build the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, he unleashed a...
It’s time to rethink the factors shaping U.S. defense policy. The United States is presently confronted with the most significant national security challenge since its founding. In the past three years, the global deterrence networks that the United States developed...
RAF Lakenheath, U.K. On the night of April 13, 2024, U.S. Air Force crews took to the skies in the Middle East, having received word that Iran had launched one-way attack drones and missiles at Israel. In one F-15E in...
