AFWERX’s New AI-Powered Tool Will Track Objects in Orbit, Even as They Maneuver

April 2, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

AFWERX, the Air Force’s technology incubator, is funding the development of an AI-powered tool for identifying and tracking objects in low-Earth orbit, even as they maneuver and try to cloak themselves.

The tool, dubbed Rapid Analysis of Photometric Tracks for space Object identification and behavior Recognition or RAPTOR, is being developed by Slingshot Aerospace, an El Segundo, Calif.-based company specializing in using new technologies for space domain awareness missions like satellite tracking, space traffic coordination, and space modeling and simulation.

Slingshot did not comment on the value of the award, but an analysis by GovTribe put the total possible value at $1.2 million.

“Tracking space objects has become much more difficult” in the past two or three years, Dylan Kesler, Slingshot’s vice president of data science, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It used to be that you could basically get an orbit and understand that those objects would continue on in that [predictable] orbit based on physics.”

But in recent years, LEO has grown more crowded with the launch of thousands of small satellites for the new Starlink constellation and its aspiring competitors. Moreover, Kesler said, increasing numbers of both commercial and military satellites are conducting rendezvous and proximity operations. Both Russian and Chinese satellites have carried out such missions that look like practice runs for attacking satellites in orbit, while commercial vehicles were being developed to maneuver, refuel, or even repair on-orbit assets.

As a result, the SDA mission has grown “much, much more complicated,” said Kessler. “With many of the objects that we have most interest in, they’re highly maneuverable. They’re getting near other objects, so it becomes difficult to distinguish them. And they’re increasingly using technologies because they don’t want to be seen.”

RAPTOR will use machine learning to analyze photometric data derived from light reflected by the satellite as it passes overhead. Slingshot collects the data using a global network of 200 advanced telescopes, said Kesler. “We’re not looking at a resolved image,” he said, because the objects are tiny compared to celestial bodies and hundreds of miles above the Earth. “At the distances we’re working with, we don’t actually see the shapes of the objects, we get literally one pixel, but in that pixel is a lot of photometric information about the wavelengths of light.”

When subjected to AI analysis, he said, that data would yield a “fingerprint” of the object, a unique signature which could be used to identify it, if it moves unexpectedly and turns up later in a different orbit.

“To the human eye, they’re indistinguishable, but not to AI,” said Kesler.

RAPTOR creates “a whole new data stream” for space domain awareness, Kesler added. It could also be useful to the commercial space sector “to monitor their own spacecraft or to monitor other spacecraft from, say, other companies or governments that are not cooperative and sharing information” about how their vehicles are maneuvering.

In addition, a simulation engine Slingshot is developing would enable signatures to be developed based on data about a particular satellite—its size, geometry, and composition—even before it was launched, Kelser said. “So a big part of the RAPTOR project is developing fingerprints for objects that we expect to see, not just what we’re actually observing in orbit.”

RAPTOR will be a technology demonstration for the Air Force, Kesler said, but Slingshot will use the system for its own mission. “We’re not just doing a demonstration, we’re actually building systems that will become part of Slingshot’s space sensor network and space domain awareness work,” he said.

Right now, Slingshot, along with the rest of the SDA industry, is focused on identifying and tracking objects in orbit, but RAPTOR would enable the next step: to start predicting behavior and figuring out intention.

“I think much of the industry is still working on characterizing objects and figuring out orbits, but we’re going to be able to predict behaviors, and we’re going to predict outcomes and intentions eventually, and this is the first step to getting that far,” Kesler said.

Caine Touts Unusual Experience for Chairman as Asset in ‘Unconventional Times’

April 1, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff touted his highly unusual background for the job as an asset and reaffirmed his commitment to stay apolitical during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 1.

If confirmed, Lt. Gen. John “Dan” Caine would be the first Air National Guardsman to serve as the nation’s top military officer. He would also be the first Chairman to have never been a service chief or a combatant commander. U.S. law requires the Chairman to have that experience but says those requirements can be waived “if the President determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”

“Yes, Senators, I acknowledge that I’m an unconventional nominee. … For many Americans, I’m an unknown leader,” Caine said in his opening statement.

Yet, “these are unconventional times,” Caine added, and he asserted that his experience as the top military advisor to the head of the CIA was a close approximation to the kind of role he will play as Trump’s principal military advisor.

Caine also noted his time as a combat F-16 pilot in the Air National Guard, assignment with Special Operations Command, and even his experience as an entrepreneur as useful in directing tighter financial accountability from the services and attracting new entrants and startups to defense work.

The confirmation hearing served as the public’s first extended look at Caine, whose nomination came after Trump abruptly dismissed Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as Chairman.

At the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump recounted meeting Caine in Iraq in 2018 and seemed to say the general put on a “Make America Great Again” hat and said “I will kill for you.” At his hearing, however, Caine said he believed Trump “was actually talking about somebody else,” and that he has never worn “political merchandise or said anything to that effect.”

At other points in the hearing, Caine faced questions about how he would handle political pressure or unlawful orders. He reaffirmed that his loyalty is to the Constitution and emphasized that as Chairman, his role will be advisory, that he will not be in the chain of command to operators, and that it will be up to other officers to execute presidential orders.

Asked about the recent “Signal” controversy, in which senior administration officials discussed an imminent strike on Houthi targets in Yemen using the commercial, encrypted “Signal” messaging app instead of secure government channels, Caine said that if he had been included in the discussion, he would have raised concerns about the prospect of it being monitored by hostile entities.

“I think we all can agree that we need to always protect the element of surprise,” he said. “We protect our servicemen and women who are going into combat operations.”

Caine said his focus will be to urge and motivate the service chiefs to find faster ways to field technology that will preserve the nation’s military superiority, which he said is at risk as China improves its own military at a rapid pace.

“Our national defense requires urgent action and reform across the board. We must go faster,” Caine said. “We must move with a sense of urgency. We can never forget that our number one job is to create peace through overwhelming strength, and if need be, fight and win our nation’s wars.

Caine said he fully supports the modernization of the nuclear triad as the foundation of American security, including a new Sea-Launched Cruise Missile for the Navy. All of Trump’s top Pentagon nominees have voiced support for nuclear modernization thus far.

Middle East

Under questioning from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Caine said Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons and that a nuclear-equipped Iran would be an “imminent and existential threat” to U.S. forces in the Middle East and possibly elsewhere.

Cotton, noting that Trump has said “there will be bombing” if Iran refuses to cooperate, asked Caine if he would provide “the best candid advice you can about viable military options and the likely consequences?”

“I think that’s what the job of the Joint Staff is to do, is to provide a range of options for the President to consider and then allow him to select whatever those options should work best for him,” Caine replied.

More broadly, Caine agreed with a statement from Sen. Angus King (I-Me.) that terrorism is not getting the attention it deserves.

“What I’m very worried about now is a resurgence of terrorism,” King said. “Syria potentially could become another base for ISIS. There are thousands of ISIS fighters in jails in Syria. If they’re released, that could be a major challenge. West Africa is now a major area of al Qaeda activity. … It doesn’t take many terrorists to create serious problems for this country and for people around the world.”

Caine agreed: “We have to keep pressure on the terrorists. … Unfortunately, we can never take our eyes off of it completely. The challenge that somebody would want to do harm to us or to our interests around the world is not going to go away anytime soon.”

Air Force Issues

If confirmed, Caine would be the sixth Airmen to be Chairman, and during his confirmation hearing, service issues came up a few times.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) asked about the possibility of increasing the Air Force’s fleet of new B-21 bombers from its current plan of 100 aircraft to 200, but Caine said he needed a chance to study the requirement.

“After the analysis portion … I’d like to speak to the other joint chiefs and the combatant commanders whose requirements Raider will fulfill before I commit to supporting any particular number of B-21,” he said. Pressed, he said he “would not hesitate” to recommend buying more if the analysis supports such a decision.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), meanwhile, brought up intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in one of his questions, saying “the Air Force specifically has been on a mission to eliminate ISR as one of the key missions. It’s disappeared even as a term in several of their documents in recent years,” and that each service needs more resources so that it can do its own ISR.

“ISR and the ability to have indications and warnings to make decisions for commanders … is a key and essential part of our overall ability to execute the missions that we must do,” Caine replied, without getting into specifics.

Air Force’s Last Active-Duty F-15C Made Its Final Flight at Kadena

April 1, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Air Force’s last Active-Duty F-15C made its final flight earlier this year, as Kadena Air Base in Japan continues its long goodbye to the iconic fighter after more than 45 years of operations.

The Eagle’s last sortie at Kadena took place Jan. 24, the base’s 18th Wing announced in a recent release. The aircraft is now being converted into a maintenance training aircraft.

The same day, Kadena activated the 67th Fighter Generation Squadron and deactivated the 18th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. The Air Force has been moving from aircraft maintenance squadrons to fighter generation squadrons for several years now as part of an effort to have operators and maintainers work side-by-side. Maj. Eric Boehm, who had commanded the 18th AMS, assumed command of the 67th FGS

Kadena is also making the transition as it prepares to welcome a new fleet of F-15EX Eagle IIs. The Pentagon announced last summer that it would put 36 F-15EXs at the Okinawa base to replace its 48 F-15C and D fighters, and in a recent press conference with local media, 18th Wing commander Brig. Gen. Nicholas Evans said he expects the first F-15EX fighters to arrive between March and June 2026, per Stars and Stripes.

After more than four decades of service, Kadena began phasing out its F-15C/Ds in 2022 as the Air Force leaders said the Eagles had become increasingly limited as they outlived their intended service lives. By April 2023, the base was hosting a farewell ceremony with then-Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, followed by more milestone retirements.

At the same time, the 18th Wing has declined to identify how many F-15C/Ds were left at the base, citing operational security concerns. The March 26 release was the wing’s first acknowledgement that its entire F-15C fleet is now gone or grounded, though it made no mention of the wing’s two-seat F-15D models.

The 18th Wing did not immediately respond to queries from Air & Space Forces Magazine.

A U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle takes off after the 67th Fighter Generation Squadron activation ceremony for its final flight at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Jan. 24, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Catherine Daniel

Throughout the divestment process, the Air Force has deployed rotations of fourth and fifth-generation fighters, including F-15Es, F-16s, F-35s, and F-22s, to supplement its posture at the strategic base, located just 400 miles from Taiwan.

Some of the fighters being retired went to the “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., while others were sent to other Air Force units, according to the 18th Wing. Kadena also kept a few jets to train weapons loaders and maintainers.

Additionally, some of the 18th Wing’s Airmen went to Portland Air National Guard Base, Ore., early this year for 60 days of training on both the F-15 and the F-15EX. The training focused on adapting from “an air-to-air exclusive mission to a multirole mission,” to incorporate air-to-ground tactics and advanced weapon systems, the wing said in a release. Given the similarities between the Eagles and the Eagle II, squadrons should be able to switch from the F-15s to F-15EX aircraft with fairly minimal training.

Portland became the first installation to receive the operational F-15EX last year, marking the first time an Air National Guard has gotten a new-type fighter before the Active-Duty force.

The Air Force initially planned a fleet of 144 F-15EXs, but in the fiscal 2025 budget proposed limiting the fleet to just 98 aircraft. The House Armed Services Committee, in its version of the 2025 budget, directed the purchase of an additional 24 aircraft, for a total fleet of 122 Eagle IIs, but that budget never passed.

A U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle taxis after the 67th Fighter Generation Squadron activation ceremony for its final flight at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Jan. 24, 2025. The last F-15C will transition to become a maintenance training aircraft. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Amy Kelley

Space Force Awards First Commercial Reserve Contracts

April 1, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force took its first tentative steps last month toward leveraging commercial space providers to augment military capabilities with four small, short-term contracts to enhance space domain awareness.

The first contracts under the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve program total just $1.1 million for 90 days beginning March 1, Col. Richard Kniseley told Air & Space Forces Magazine. More deals will follow.

“Most likely we will look to expand and renew,” Kniseley said. “If the right budget comes into place, we will expand into additional members. Even when the pilot programs are going on, we’re keeping an eye on other companies that we want to onboard at a later period.”

CASR is an attempt to create a space complement to the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which leverages commercial airlines to provide aircraft and crews available in times of crisis in exchange for day-to-day contracts. Similarly, the Space Force wants to establish pre-set agreements to leverage commercial satellites in times of conflict or crisis.

“What we’re attempting to do in CASR is to establish the acquisition contracting framework to ensure that the capabilities will be there” when needed, Kniseley said. “But within that framework, we’re able to get commercial more involved.”

The very nature of conflict in space is part of the challenge. The Space Force chose to start with “pilot” agreements so program directors can learn as they go, unsure of all the nuances such agreements might need over time. The biggest difference: “A commercial airliner will not go into a [war zone],” Kniseley said. But the same can’t be said of space assets. “Space is operating over China and Russia every single day. Even if they are not on contract, a lot of them are in the fight—they’ve been getting cyber attacked. They’ve been receiving certain level of threats.”

Crucial differences and questions like whether the Pentagon will act to protect companies in the event they are attacked; how companies will be compensated if they are attacked and/or damaged; and whether agreeing to support the Space Force might require space companies to curtail use by other customers are all open to debate.

While those details are being worked out, Kniseley said his team is experimenting. Those first four CASR pilot contracts are “executing under normal DOD terms and conditions,” Kniseley said. The Space Force is not naming the firms over concern that identifying them could make them targets. The contracts give the service a baseline level of capability and pre-fixed prices for “surges.” In return, companies get to participate in wargames and exercises, opening a valuable window into military space operations.

The likely next mission area for CASR is satellite communications. A recent wargame with commercial SATCOM providers sought to better understand how commercial services could be integrated into military systems and processes, Kniseley said. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has cited commercial satcom as a natural fit for CASR.

“We know that the demand signal for satellite communications is almost unlimited—it’s an insatiable appetite for that kind of capability, certainly more than the government can put on orbit,” Saltzman said while visiting AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies last week. “When we go to crisis or conflict mode, we know we’re going to have an increase in the needs for satellite communications. And so the idea was, well, we can use this kind of Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve construct to pre-negotiate our contracts, talk about what we’ll need, talk about all of the work that has to be done, so that when the crisis kicks off, that’s all behind us, and we can sign on the dotted line and immediately, or near immediately, have access to more capacity.”

Kniseley said he hopes to add CASR contracts for satellite communications within the next six months. Still more missions could follow: tactical surveillance, reconnaissance, and tracking, for example, and “small launch”—the ability to get a small payload into space in a hurry. The Space Force has experimented with ways to be tactically responsive in rapidly launching space missions.

“I’m pretty hopeful by the end of the year, you’re actually going to see your first set of full CASR members as well,” Kniseley said. “So the program is definitely going full steam ahead.”

New Air Force ‘Doomsday’ Wing Boosts Nuclear Command and Control

April 1, 2025 | By David Roza

The Air Force welcomed a new wing meant to improve command and control over the military’s nuclear enterprise. The 95th Wing combines command and control units from the Active-Duty Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve under one roof to streamline command and better advocate for resources.

The wing was provisionally activated Oct. 1, 2024, officially activated Feb. 28, then commemorated on March 28 with a ceremony at its new headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. The ceremony also saw the inactivation of the 595th Command and Control Group (C2G), which ensured senior U.S. officials could maintain nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) and command conventional forces during a crisis.

The 595th flew and maintained the Air Force’s fleet of four E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC). Also known as the “Doomsday plane,” the E-4B is a Boeing 747 hardened against the effects of nuclear detonations, including electromagnetic pulse, and equipped with worldwide communications gear.

The 595th used to be a standalone group under the 8th Air Force, which flies bombers under Air Force Global Strike Command. Most other component units of the 8th Air Force are wings, larger organizations that generally receive more resources.

“Since its realignment in October 2016, the 595th C2G has grown exponentially, but the level of professionalism demonstrated by these Airmen has never faltered,” Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, commander of the Eighth Air Force and the Joint-Global Strike Operations Center, said at the ceremony, according to a press release. “These professionals serve in a dynamic environment to maintain ‘the watch’ and fulfill a host of no-fail missions which are foundational to nuclear deterrence and national security.”

Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, left, commander of 8th Air Force and Joint-Global Strike Operations Center, holds the guidon steady as Col. David Leaumont, 95th Wing commander, unfurls the 95th Wing guidon during the 95th Wing activation ceremony, March 28, 2025, at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. U.S. Air Force photo by Charles Haymond

The professionals will keep serving, though now as part of the 95th Wing. Former 595th group commander Col. David Leaumont took the helm of the wing at the ceremony.

Besides the former 595th, other units that are now part of the wing include the 253rd C2G, of the Wyoming Air National Guard, and the 610th Command and Control Squadron, an Air Force Reserve unit stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

The new wing stands up as the Air Force seeks to modernize its strategic arsenal with new stealth bombers, upgraded B-52s, and new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Navy also probably needs more ballistic missile submarines, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command said in March. The changes are meant to deter nuclear-armed adversaries, namely Russia and China. The threat is “significantly greater” than it was in an earlier era, and “this is not ‘Cold War 2.0,’” Cotton said.

NC3 needs to keep pace with the changes, Leaumont said at the ceremony.

“The nation realized they needed support on nuclear weapons management,” he told local news channel First Alert 6. “The one thing that they did not include in that was the nuclear command and control and communications piece, or NC3. So this wing fixes that problem.”

More changes could be on the way. Cotton warned in October that the decades-old NC3 enterprise is desperate for an upgrade, and artificial intelligence could help.

“AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities,” the general said at the 2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference. “But we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us.”

Heather Penney, senior resident fellow at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, noted in an October podcast that NC3 is often taken for granted, “because it’s largely invisible … underground cables, computers, communications links, and a very few specialized aircraft and satellites are the backbone of this mission function,” she said. “But it’s not like we see those things at air shows or on promotional posters.”

Last April, the Air Force awarded a $13 billion contract to replace the NAOC with the Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC). The current E-4Bs have been flying since the 1970s and are struggling amid “capability gaps, diminishing manufacturing sources, increased maintenance costs, and parts obsolescence,” according to budget documents.

In May, contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation, announced it had secured five Korean Air 747-8 passenger jets to host the SAOC system. The aircraft were built around 2015 and will be about 15 years old when the first ones enter service.

Leaumont expects 79 additional troops will come to Offutt initially as part of the new wing, but that could grow by 500 to 700 more people as more aircraft come online “early next decade,” he told First Alert 6.

The 95th Wing traces its roots to the 95th Bombardment Group, which flew B-17s in World War II. The group was re-activated as the 95th Bomb Wing during the Cold War, where it flew B-35s and B-52s. Most recently it was the 95th Air Base Wing assigned to the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

“We are looking forward to both carrying on the heritage of a storied World War II unit, while moving forward with the complex missions providing national-level command and control to the most senior officials leading the United States,” Leaumont said, according to the release.

More A-10s Deploy to Middle East, This Time from Idaho

March 31, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Multiple A-10 attack aircraft from the Idaho Air National Guard deployed to the Middle East over the weekend. More than 300 Airmen from the 124th Fighter Wing, along with the attack aircraft, were sent to southwest Asia within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility on March 29.

The move comes just two days after the Air Force confirmed the arrival of “a number of” B-2 stealth bombers on the island of Diego Garcia, which is within striking distance of Yemen, where the U.S. has launched a renewed campaign against the Houthis.

“The 124th has a legacy of service to our state and nation, and this mission further cements our commitment to protecting the United States of America and securing our interests around the globe,” Maj. Gen. Tim Donnellan, adjutant general of Idaho and commander of the Idaho National Guard, said in a release. “Readiness and relevance are our strengths, whether performing our state mission here at home or our federal mission abroad.”

The move follows officials telling Air & Space Forces Magazine earlier this month that additional aircraft are expected to be sent to the Middle East as part of the buildup against the Houthis. The exact role the A-10s will play remains unclear.

Airmen and several A-10 Thunderbolt II’s from the 124th Fighter Wing, Idaho Air National Guard, prepare to leave for a deployment to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility March 29, 2025. The deployment is supported by more than 300 Airmen. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech Sgt. Mercedee Wilds)

The Air Force added that duration of the deployment is dependent on the “needs of the U.S. Air Force and mission requirements from combatant commands.” While a local CBS affiliate reported the wing is scheduled to be stationed in the area for about six months, the Idaho ANG was not immediately available to confirm this.

On March 27, Air Force Global Strike Command confirmed the arrival of B-2 bombers at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The island is roughly 2,200 miles from Yemen, and the B-2 has an unrefueled range of about 6,000 nautical miles.

The A-10, built for close air support with maneuverability at slow speeds and low altitudes, has been crucial in major conflicts since the Gulf War in 1991. Its iconic GAU-8/A Avenger 30mm cannon can destroy heavy armor, including tanks, and it is equipped with advanced counter-measures for surface-to-air threats.

The aircraft have been repeatedly sent to bolster airpower in the Middle East since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2022 and the ensuing unrest in the region. A-10s deployed in March 2023, then again in October 2024 alongside an F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron and an F-15E Strike Eagle squadron. On Nov. 29, an A-10 struck militants preparing to launch rockets at an American position. Just last month, the Air Force posted photos of the aircraft conducting presence patrols to defend an undisclosed location in the Middle East.

Since the Idaho ANG received its first Warthogs in 1996, the Wing has frequently deployed to support combat operations across the Middle East, including its largest deployments include those in 2020 for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and in 2016 for Operation Inherent Resolve. After three decades, the A-10 fleet will begin its retirement in the fall of next year. The 124th Fighter Wing is set to transition to F-16 fighters starting in spring 2027, pending the completion of an environmental analysis in the coming months.

Former Air Force Secretary Didn’t Include NGAD in His 2026 Budget Plan

March 31, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter—announced as the F-47 by President Donald Trump this month—wasn’t going to be in the last Air Force budget request from President Joe Biden’s administration, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed in a recent podcast, saying he believed there were higher priorities for the service to address.

Appearing on the Defense and Aerospace Report, Kendall said he paused the NGAD program last summer because “we just didn’t have enough money” in projected budgets to afford the planned sixth-generation fighter and other top priorities. While latter iterations of the budget included more funds, it was still not enough for all the most pressing needs, he said.

The Pentagon had previously projected that the NGAD program would cost nearly $20 billion over five years.

The Biden administration put together the fiscal 2026 budget to hand off to Trump’s team as it was preparing to leave office, and NGAD “wasn’t in it, and it was not a higher priority than the other things on my list,” Kendall said.

There was “no place left to trade off, within the Air Force budget, to fund it,” Kendall said of NGAD, which he acknowledged will cost “more than twice the price” of the F-35, which costs around $90 million per copy.

Kendall felt that certain missions—counter-space and air base defense being two he cited—were more important than NGAD. Without air base defense, he noted, “the F-22s, F-35s, and the F-47s will never get off the ground.”

How exactly the Trump administration will handle that delicate balance remains to be seen as it prepares its own 2026 budget submission.

“Again, it’s about affordability and it’s about strategic priorities, and the Air Force will have to sort it out,” Kendall said.

NGAD’s History

Trump, alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, announced Boeing would build the F-47, a major coup for the company after Lockheed Martin won the F-22 and F-35 competitions.

Former Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter, who served under Kendall and also appeared on the podcast, said the NGAD submissions from Boeing and Lockheed Martin were “quite creative” and very close, technically.

Boeing may have had the edge, he suggested, because it saw the competition as a “must-win.”

“What you see sometimes on these things is, the incumbent is a little more risk-averse than the company that doesn’t have the installed [industrial] base at risk,” he said. The challenger can sometimes “be a little more innovative, or risk a little more in their proposal.”

The NGAD program, he added, was structured to encourage innovation. The F-47 will serve as “Increment 1 of NGAD, right? With the concept being that there will be future increments. And so it was designed not to be this ‘all or nothing,’ ‘hey, if you don’t win this, you’re out for the next three decades’ competition. It was designed to be something that…if you win, you have an order for 100, roughly, aircraft, but there’ll be other orders coming down the pike, and so you stay in the game.”

Hunter was quick to note, however, that “obviously time will tell how many increments ever get built.”

Kendall agreed that the offerings were very close technically, and that Lockheed “could have won this.”

Lockheed will have solid work with the F-35 for many years, he explained, but Boeing only had the F-15EX, which has a limited planned production, so Boeing, “if it was going to stay a viable fighter builder going forward, had to win this competition.”

Podcast host Vago Muradian asked how much past performance played a role in the competition, noting that Lockheed has two fifth-generation stealth fighter production programs under its belt, while Boeing has none, and Boeing has in recent years struggled to produce the KC-46 tanker, T-7 trainer and MQ-25 Navy tanker while losing nearly $10 billion on those programs.

But Kendall noted struggles with Lockheed over the price and schedule for F-35 Block 4 upgrades and sustainment, “so nobody’s got a clean record in terms of past performance.”

Hunter added that while past performance is nearly always a criteria, “it rarely is a differentiator.” He also said that technical performance is “rigorously validated” in such competitions.

“We don’t just take a company at their word if they say, ‘Yeah, our design meets your criteria for observability,’ right?” he said.

Kendall cautioned that “there’s risk with anybody we picked at this point. These are new designs. They’re aggressive designs. They’ve got a lot of new technologies [that] are going to be integrated together. That’s always very challenging. So I expect that there will be issues in risk that arise that have to be dealt with, no matter who won this.”

Calling the NGAD competition “viable,” Kendall suggested one of the companies “moved faster to demonstrate the key technologies, but the other one did get there and demonstrate them as well.” He didn’t say which entrant demonstrated capabilities more quickly.

“The designs are quite different,” he added. “ … It’s interesting how, when you give people the same problem, you can get engineers that come back with very different solutions. But I think we had a valid competition,” Kendall said.

The NGAD program has its roots in a program called the Aerospace Innovation Initiative started by Kendall when he was undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics in the Obama administration. The initiative produced “X-planes” but not prototypes of the NGAD crewed airplane, called the Penetrating Combat Aircraft.

“When I started [it] … it was designed to mature technologies for a sixth-generation tactical aircraft,” he said. “There were certain desirable characteristics we were after, but I basically got $1 billion put into the five-year plan, into the budget, split evenly between the Navy, the Air Force and [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] to do a technology maturation program.”

When Kendall returned to the Pentagon as Secretary of the Air Force in 2020, “the X-planes had been built. They’ve been successful, and the Air Force had started down the path towards what is now known as the F-47,” he said.

The NGAD has always been intended as a “family of systems,” Kendall noted, with the crewed fighter only one element. Others include space-based sensors, offboard communications links, new weapons, and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

The F-47 started out to be a “pretty direct descendant of the F-22…that’s essentially the design we have,” Kendall said, but under his tenure, it also took on the ability to “do other things, particularly controlling CCAs.”

Future

During the Oval Office announcement that Boeing had won the F-47 contract, Trump suggested a “toned down” version of the F-47 might be available for export, but Kendall thinks foreign sales are unlikely.

With the NGAD, “the emphasis was on getting as much capability as we could into the platform. That’s what has led to the very high price that the F-47 will have,” he said.

“I would be very surprised if any of our partners were prepared to pay that unit cost for a new aircraft. I’ve heard some stories that suggest that they would have bought the F-22 if we’d been willing to share the technology. I’m not sure that that’s true,” he said.

On top of that, he questioned whether allies would want the fighter if its capabilities were “toned down.” Some are pursuing sixth-gen fighters of their own.

The Navy will also not be buying the Air Force’s version of NGAD, though Hunter noted that the Navy’s own effort—called the F/A-XX—is sharing technology developed for the F-47.

“Even though we didn’t do a joint program here, like the F-35 … the approach means that at the architecture level, you’ve got compatibility with the Navy program,” Hunter said. The NGAD will be able to “seamlessly integrate” with the Navy’s systems, he said.

Northrop Grumman is competing for the F/A-XX against Boeing, with Lockheed having been eliminated. Kendall revealed that Northrop Grumman participated in the technology demonstrator program, but it was not chosen to go to the final round of the NGAD competition. Northrop has only revealed it “did not bid” the NGAD.

The Air Force has said that Boeing won the NGAD based on “best overall value” to the service.

Kendall said industrial base considerations—such as expanding the number of active-production fighter companies, so Lockheed would not have a monopoly—was not a consideration in the final analysis.

Lockheed has not yet said if it plans to protest the NGAD award to Boeing. If it does, the Government Accountability Office has 100 calendar days from the date of the protest to adjudicate whether the Air Force acted fairly in its choice of Boeing.

Other Priorities

In the never-released 2026 budget request where Kendall cut funding for NGAD, he said he instead prioritized missions like counter-space weapons and air base defense.

“We need to move forward aggressively with counter-space,” he said, noting that China now has scores of satellites designed to target U.S. forces and enable Chinese long-range fires. “So we had to respond to that, and I thought that was an important national priority … to defend our forces, but also our allies.”

Air base defense was another. China has “fielded literally thousands of weapons to attack” Air Force operating locations “with cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonics,” he said, and a cost-effective defense against them is crucial.

Air base defense is an Army mission, but that service’s limited number of Patriot and THAAD air defense systems “are not going to get you there,” especially given the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment plan of operating from many locations and playing a shell game to protect them, Kendall said. Not long before the end of his tenure, Kendall pointed this out and said he’d be “comfortable” taking over the air base defense mission from the Army, since its plans won’t deliver the needed protection in a timely fashion.

“The economics just don’t work,” with Patriot and THAAD, he said, “So we need something more cost effective than those, and that was [also] not in the budget.”

F-35

Kendall said the Air Force “absolutely” needs Block 4 of the F-35.

“No question about it,” he said. “We’re in a race for technological superiority against a formidable opponent, and we cannot stand still. And 100-200 F-47s, that we’re not going to get for several years, is not going to keep us competitive. We’ve got to do more than that, and that has to include, I think, the Block 4 as well as the [Collaborative Combat Aircraft] and the Increment 2 of the CCA.”

Former STRATCOM Bosses: US Must Recommit to Nuclear Deterrent to Combat Russia, China

March 31, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Russia’s actions in Ukraine and China’s growing arsenal show that America needs to revamp and revitalize—not retrench—its nuclear deterrent, former U.S. Strategic Command bosses said March 31.

Their remarks on a webinar hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies come as the Pentagon embarks on the early stages of a sweeping modernization effort touching programs across the nuclear enterprise. Some critics call modernization too expensive and unnecessary, advocate for reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, or suggest cutting one leg of the air-land-sea nuclear triad entirely.

Retired Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, who led STRATCOM from 2007-2011 and wrote multiple research papers for Mitchell on nuclear deterrence, said ideas about cutting costs or force structure skip over the threat that the nuclear triad is meant to deter.

“We just kind of brush aside the fact that these weapons are so devastating and are in fact an existential threat to the country,” he said. By existential, he added, “I mean tear up the Constitution, back to an agrarian society, throw away everything in history since 1776.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored that threat—as well as the need to maintain a comprehensive deterrent, said retired Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler, who led STRATCOM from 2011 to 2013.

“Just imagine, on the day the Russians invaded Ukraine, if we had removed ICBMs, if we had withdrawn our nuclear forces from Europe, if we had restricted the number of [nuclear submarines] we were putting at sea, if we had significantly, unilaterally reduced the number of weapons, etc., etc. We hadn’t done any of that. And I think the United States was in a much better place on that day than we would have been otherwise.”

Early in the invasion, Russia announced it was putting its nuclear forces on high alert—the start of what many Western officials deemed nuclear saber-rattling. It reached a crescendo in October 2022 as Ukraine succeeded on the battlefield and Russia launched a disinformation campaign suggesting Ukraine would use a “dirty bomb”—an idea U.S. and European officials feared the Russians would use as a pretext for deploying nuclear weapons.

Retired Navy Adm. Charles Richard, who led STRATCOM from 2019 to 2022, said the war in Ukraine took conversations about nuclear deterrence out of the theoretical realm.

“Based on Russian actions in the Ukraine war, I think in the first time in STRATCOM’s history, we were enhanced above a day-to-day posture based on the threat that we faced,” he said, declining to reveal any more details.

Like Kehler, Richard suggested the conflict shows why the U.S. needs a stronger nuclear deterrent than what it has now. For example, he said, the U.S. Air Force should put some of its bomber fleet on alert status, ready to go at a moment’s notice, something not seen since the end of the Cold War.

“I think a lesson out of the Ukraine crisis [is] in many situations, the signaling flexibility that the bomber leg gives you is absolutely a desirable attribute,” Richard said. “There are now an equal number of situations that by the time you figure out you need that air leg, generating it is going to be considered escalatory, and you’re just going to be too late.”

Indeed, there are a range of posture changes and ideas that need to be reconsidered, both Kehler and Richard agreed, driven by China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal to create what experts are calling a “tripolar” world.

“The emergence of a three-peer … world changes everything when it comes to what I would consider classic analysis of strategic stability,” Richard said, defining strategic stability as a state where no one is incentivized to make the first strike. “All classic strategic stability work was based on a bipolar two-party world. That world does not exist anymore.”

While Kehler said he believes the “fundamentals” of strategic deterrence remain sound, the mechanics of achieving it against Russia and China, two adversaries who have declared a willingness to work together, are complex.

“We’re using familiar terms, but today’s environment is a lot different than the Cold War, and so I would encourage all of us not to refer to today like a new Cold War,” Kehler said. “Because I think that the requirements and the environment are so different today that we fall into a trap of thinking about how we did this yesterday, as opposed to how we need to do this today, and then how do we need to do this tomorrow? The situation is different.”

Against that backdrop, any consideration of removing one leg of the triad is incredibly risky, the leaders agreed. In particular, while the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles has come under fire for soaring costs and slipping schedules, “you simply don’t have the capacity to deter two peers at the same time without your ICBM leg,” Richard said.

While the price tag of Sentinel—some $140 billion—and other projects is high, the former STRATCOM bosses argued that the true cost of nuclear modernization is about the nation’s survival.

“Although conventional might is important as well to deter, every dollar spent on conventional weapons is wasted if we don’t, first and foremost, have the backstop and foundation of an adequate nuclear deterrent,” Chilton said.

Historically, the government invested 6 or 7 percent of its defense budget to modernize its nuclear deterrent for a few years at a time, Kehler said.

“Last time we did that was during the Reagan years, and we’re living off of those systems yet today,” he said. “And so we go through times when we do life extensions or we do some modernization effort, but compared to the investment benefits that we get elsewhere in the Department of Defense by maintaining the deterrent the way we do, I think that’s a great investment for us.”

Civilian Cyber Vulnerabilities Threaten Pacific Deployment Plans: Report

March 31, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The U.S. military’s ability to deploy troops across the vast Indo-Pacific theater relies on critical civilian infrastructure like airlines, railways, and ports that is vulnerable to disruption by enemy cyber attacks, a new report warns.

In a war with China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could seek to cripple America’s ability to fight with cyber attacks on civilian infrastructure it relies on to move forces across the continental United States (CONUS) and out into theater, said the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0, a non-profit successor to the original CSC, created by Congress to study how to defend the U.S. against large-scale cyber attacks.

Despite the threat, the Pentagon’s efforts to secure that infrastructure are inadequate and siloed off from the broader efforts of the federal government to protect the nation from cyberattack, the commission declared.

“We use the commercial rail, ports, and aviation system to move our troops, equipment, and supplies forward,” retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, the director of CSC 2.0, told reporters on a conference call last week.

Specific deployments like a Special Forces team going to Yemen might rely exclusively on military transportation like aircraft or naval vessels, Montgomery explained. But in any major mobilization, even troops being taken to the battlefield by military transportation would likely have to rely on civilian infrastructure to get to their port of departure.

“For broadly moving our forces, for generating the forces that we need to fight a major war, we’re going to use our commercial rail, port, and aviation systems 95 to 98 percent,” said Montgomery, a former staffer for Sen. John McCain and executive director of the original CSC.

In a potential major conflict with China, the U.S. would have to move tens of thousands of troops—if not more—in short order. The sheer scale would require the military to rely on civilian transportation.

“U.S. adversaries know that compromising this critical infrastructure through cyber and physical attacks would impede America’s ability to deploy, supply, and sustain large forces,” the commission stated in its report.

What’s more, China appears to be acting on that knowledge. Public reporting from the U.S. intelligence community indicates that a Chinese cyber actor called Volt Typhoon has prepositioned itself within the networks of civilian critical infrastructure providers.

“That’s not espionage,” said Montgomery, “That is operational preparation of the battlefield by the adversary. That is China saying, ‘Not only do you, Mark, now know that your warfighting is enabled by your [civilian] transportation systems, but we, the Chinese, know it too and we’ve done something about it.’”

According to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, in the event of an imminent conflict with the U.S., China would “consider aggressive cyber operations against U.S. critical infrastructure and military assets to impede U.S. decision-making, induce societal panic, and interfere with the deployment of U.S. forces.”

DOD is taking steps to defend against the threat. For years now, Pentagon leaders have considered what it could mean if an adversary hacked into a U.S. base’s energy grid, for example, crippling the military’s ability to do its mission.

And within the fence line, Montgomery said, they are succeeding—he described U.S. military bases as “the Noah’s ark of infrastructure: There’s two of everything.”

But its efforts to work with civilian critical infrastructure owners and operators have not been coordinated with the broader efforts of the federal government to protect critical infrastructure against foreign cyber attacks.

During a conflict with an high-end adversary, it’s “likely to attack U.S. critical infrastructure in an attempt to constrain Washington’s policy options, including its capacity to mobilize the armed forces. Inhibiting the U.S. military’s ability to move troops and materiel from ‘fort to port’ takes a significant capability off America’s chessboard. Ensuring the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure must be a top priority for the nation as a whole and for DOD in particular,” concludes the report.