Airmen Confused and Understaffed for Elements of ACE, Report Says

April 22, 2025 | By David Roza

The Air Force must better explain Agile Combat Employment concepts, align training standards, and address staff shortages to be ready to implement the strategy, according to a new report by the federally funded RAND Corporation.

ACE involves Airmen working in small teams and rapidly moving between expeditionary airfields to avoid being targeted by enemy missiles and other long-range weapons. Service officials bill ACE as the key to success in a conflict against Russia or China, but it marks a shift from the past quarter-century of the Global War on Terror, where Airmen generally operated in large groups from permanent bases with steady supply streams and communications.

ACE requires mission-ready Airmen, the Air Force’s term for troops who can operate in small, multifunctional teams in contested and austere locations.

“However, the road to implementation of MRA has been anything but straightforward, particularly for Airmen in combat support communities, such as maintenance, logistics, engineering, and force protection,” RAND wrote in its April 18 report.

Combat support Airmen fix aircraft, maintain runways, move cargo around base, and defend the flightline, but they don’t typically organize and train as multifunctional teams, RAND noted. The Air Force asked RAND to help chart a path for preparing these Airmen for ACE, and the think tank grouped its findings into three focus areas: organizing, training, and cross-cutting issues.

Organizing

Within organization, RAND found two key themes: there is still confusion about how Air Force units are organized for ACE, and finding enough combat support Airmen to support those units will be a challenge.

Alongside ACE, the Air Force is introducing Air Task Forces, then Combat Wings, as the units of action that will present operational capability to joint force commanders. ATFs and Combat Wings are meant to provide more stability for Airmen and enhance effectiveness by allowing them to train together for longer.

Among the formations are Mission Generation Force Elements and Mission Sustainment Teams. The MGFEs include aircraft and the maintenance Airmen who fix them, while the MSTs include engineers, security forces, and other roles who help the MGFE work from austere locations.

But RAND found confusion about the operational relationship between the two kinds of groups. A representative from Air Mobility Command told RAND that MSTs are expected to attach to mobility MGFEs, but an Air Combat Command said combat MGFEs would include some combat support Airmen that would make attaching an MST unnecessary.

“The main implication of this confusion is that it could result in redundancies of [combat support] training … and manning if MSTs do not deploy” to contingency locations, RAND wrote. It also could lead to some Airmen being unqualified to deploy to a contingency location if they have to work in an MST or MGFE with a different understanding of the concept.

The Air Force ought to clarify the relationship between MSTs and MGFEs, RAND wrote, but another challenge is finding enough Airmen to staff those units.

“Indeed, our interview participants indicated that not having enough [combat support] Airmen to send to ATF elements is one of the top impediments for organizing Airmen in the ATF elements,” RAND said.

Multiple factors contribute to the shortage, including the fact that such Airmen provide both in-garrison support and operational mission support, making it difficult to put experienced Airmen on an ATF without hurting in-garrison work.

RAND recommended adjusting ATF requirements to accommodate a broader range of skill levels or specialties, reducing stovepipes that limit how Airmen are assigned and employed, and shifting some base support functions to civilians to free up Airmen for operational mission support.

Training and Proficiency

ACE preparations for combat support Airmen are further clouded by unclear training and proficiency standards, which interviewees feared would lead to different levels of preparedness between units and lead to wings not prioritizing mission-ready training for support Airmen.

“USAF would need to ensure that the tasks for which Airmen are to be trained to the proficient level occur with regularity,” RAND wrote.

The think tank recommended the Air Force set cross-utilization training standards, as well as a qualification program to certify that combat support Airmen are meeting mission-ready standards. The Air Force should also assign proficiency targets for ACE training events so that units can ensure they’re ready for deployment, RAND said.

Cross-Cutting Issues

Like the relationship between MSTs and MGFEs, RAND also noted confusion at the wing level and below about what qualifies as a mission-ready combat support Airmen.

“Although this lack of clarity on the definition might not affect much in the short term, some interviewees and workshop participants cited long-term challenges, such as variation in … training standards across wings,” RAND wrote. “This can create redundancies and gaps in Airman capabilities if what counts as MRA does not translate across assignments and missions.”

A consistent understanding is even more important as the Air Force switches to a new force generation model that hinges on reaching certain proficiency levels by predetermined points in a rotation cycle, RAND wrote. Still, it’s difficult to know who is proficient when the Air Force lacks a comprehensive proficiency tracking mechanism for mission-ready Airman skills, the think tank said.

A separate RAND report released on April 16 noted the same problem. Subject matter experts told RAND that Air Force Specialty Codes “as currently structured, do not accurately reflect Airmen’s existing skills and abilities; moreover, existing personnel databases and management systems do not comprehensively trackAairmen’s skills.”

RAND’s recommendation for improving how combat support Airmen prepare for ACE include:

Clarify the relationship between MSTs and MGFEs

Make the assignment requirements for ATFs and combat wings more flexible

Consider civilianizing base support functions to address CS manning challenges

Set cross-utilization training standards for CS Airmen

Establish a qualification program to certify MRA training

Assign proficiency targets for training events

Further hone CS ACE capabilities, including capabilities after battlefield attrition, through exercises such as Bamboo Eagle

Develop and disseminate a more detailed definition(s) of MRA for MAJCOMs and wings to communicate expectations to Airmen

Establish a way to track CS MRA skills in personnel systems, such as a through a prefix to an AFSC or a special experience identifier

Northrop Takes $477 Million Charge to Allow for Faster B-21 Production

April 22, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Northrop Grumman took a $477 million loss on the B-21 bomber program in the first quarter; executives said the expense will both cover unexpected materials costs and make it possible to accelerate production of the aircraft, if that’s something the Air Force wants to do.

The charge was attributed to a “change in the manufacturing process” and gives the Air Force “some optionality,” Northrop President and CEO Kathy Warden said on an earnings call. The “process change” will “enable a higher production rate,” she added.

The charge brings Northrop’s losses on the B-21—some elements of which are fixed-price—up to $2 billion, Warden said.

Executives cited higher-than-expected “rework” costs and economic effects like inflation as partial causes for the costs, but the process change costs are greater than the materials costs, Warden said, constrained in her comments because of heavy classification of the B-21 program. The Air Force concurred on the changes being made, she said, adding that the charge “is not something we will need to do again.”

Northrop Chief Financial Officer Ken Crews said the costs will be spread out across 2026, 2027, and 2028.

The company is already working under a second low-rate initial production lot contract and finishing up the engineering, manufacturing, and development phase of the program, Warden reported. She did not comment much on the progress of test flights, but did say that preliminary work has begun on B-21 improvements.

“We have … started some work on modernization, and we are building out the capability to train and sustain on the aircraft as well. So those will be gradually phased in over these next several years, and there isn’t change based on what we’re recording this quarter in that profile for the program,” she said.

Warden said Northrop is “demonstrating performance objectives through tests, and we are progressing through the first two lots of production with significant learning behind us.” The aircraft “is performing in line with the model performance and the test objective.”

The change to the manufacturing process “positions us to ramp to the quantities needed in full-rate production,” Warden said. This will also include being able to “ramp beyond the quantities in the program of record.”

The Air Force’s current plan, sometimes called the program of record, is to buy 100 B-21s. But as Warden noted, some combatant commanders and Air Force leaders have suggested more than 100 bombers are needed for the “dynamic” world situation. Those comments “reflect that increased demand signal that we’ve been talking about,” Warden said.

Warden also suggested the Air Force was looking at “scenarios” and considering the possibility “to increase the build rate” of the B-21.

NGAD

She also strongly suggested that Northrop is on Boeing’s F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance team. Though secrecy prevented her from disclosing specifics, “you know that we are a merchant supplier of mission systems … and we remain fully committed to supplying those advanced capabilities for government customers and primes,” she said. Northrop has expertise in sensors that are “easily scaled and reconfigurable for a wide application across a variety of platforms,” she added.

Northrop is also still a contender for a future fighter of its own, the Navy’s F/A-XX. Northrop and Boeing are the two finalists in the competition, but Warden had no news to report on that front.

“We expect a decision soon,” she said.

Sentinel

Last week’s explosion at Northrop’s Promontory, Utah, solid rocket motor facility won’t affect its work on the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, Warden reported.

The building destroyed in the accident makes an ingredient in SRM propellant, she said, but the company has other suppliers for the material, so “we do not expect any impact to any of our programs.” Northrop told Air & Space Forces Magazine last week that it had received hundreds of calls from Capitol Hill about the potential effect of the explosion on the Sentinel ICBM.

“Promontory is a production site for those solid rocket motors,” Warden said, but Sentinel will be unaffected, she insisted. Promontory makes large SRMs and components, she said, noting that those used in smaller Northrop munitions are made in other facilities.

“On Sentinel, the U.S. Air Force and Northrop Grumman completed a successful static fire test of the stage one solid rocket motor for the missile in March,” she said. “This critical milestone for the weapons system further validates the motor’s design and paved the way for the production and deployment of a safe, secure and reliable strategic deterrent. We are also continuing to work with the customer to identify costs and schedule efficiencies as they evaluate requirements to balance capability, affordability and schedule for the program.”

Warden said the Sentinel design is progressing “in design maturation and even testing of the missile, and so we continue to grow in confidence in the design of the system that we are building.” Northrop is working with the Air Force “to restructure the program, and … on options to reduce the overall cost and schedule.” If ways are found to do so, “what we look at in that restructuring is to ensure that the changes in requirements are adequately reflected in the design, and ultimately in the contract.”

Air Force Stands Up New Squadron to Keep Growing EW Expertise

April 22, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Air Force has launched yet another new squadron dedicated to electronic warfare as part of its effort to expand expertise in the field.

The 23rd Electronic Warfare Squadron stood up at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., home to the service’s sole wing focused on EW, the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, on April 18. It is the 12th squadron under the wing, which activated less than four years ago.

The new squadron is responsible for mission data programming in support of command and control, ISR, and Combat Air Force weapon systems like the High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). Airmen assigned to the unit will program and update the data that guides these systems, allowing missiles like HARM to track and target enemy radar by locking onto their signals. The group also provides service-wide support for EW systems such as reprogramming, threat testing, and evaluating new or upgraded technologies.

Much of this work began in 2023, when the unit operated as a detachment rather than a full squadron due to staffing shortages at the time, a spokesperson for the 350th SWW told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Lt. Col. Luke Marron, who previously served as detachment commander, now commands the 23rd EWS.

“The 23rd Electronic Warfare Squadron will be the shield that protects our forces, the sword that disrupts our enemies, and the eyes that provide critical intelligence in the electromagnetic spectrum,” Marron said in a release.

U.S. Air Force Col. Candice Sperry, 350th Spectrum Warfare Group commander, gives remarks during the reactivation ceremony for the 23d Electronic Warfare Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, April 18, 2025. The 23 EWS activated initially as a detachment in 2023 and supports mission data file reprogramming efforts for command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, combat rescue platforms and expendables for the Combat Air Force. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Anna Smith

The 23rd EWS is technically a “re-activation” of the former 23rd Fighter Squadron, which has a rich history dating back to 1939 as the 23rd Pursuit Squadron. Redesignated in 1942 as a fighter squadron, it played key roles in World War II, Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait, and the Global War on Terror targeting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The group was inactivated in 2010.

“Service and sacrifice defined the 23rd Fighter Squadron and it’ll continue to define the 23rd Electronic Warfare Squadron,” added Marron.

The Air Force, along with the rest of the Pentagon has upped its focus on the electromagnetic spectrum in recent years. Leaders say that after years of conflict in the Middle East against adversaries without those capabilities, U.S. skills in EW have “atrophied” and need to be rebuilt for a potential high-end conflict against advanced adversaries like China and Russia.

In 2020, DOD released a department-wide electromagnetic spectrum strategy, and in 2021, the Air Force stood up the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing to provide EW proficiency for the Combat Air Force. The wing oversees three groups: the 350th and 850th Spectrum Warfare Groups at Eglin, and the 950th based at Robins Air Force Base, Ga.

Still more upgrades and focus could be coming.

Gen. Dan Caine, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed the significance of the EW during his confirmation hearing earlier this month, and argued the U.S. “has lost some muscle memory defending against electromagnetic attack”—an issue his predecessor, Gen. CQ Brown, has also emphasized.

Experts have highlighted the unprecedented use of electronic warfare in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with both sides employing EW to jam drones and missiles on the front lines.

Leaders have also acknowledged even the high level of electronic warfare in Ukraine could dwarf what the U.S. could face in a conflict with China, which would likely attempt to interfere with the satellites the U.S. military relies on for basic functions such as navigation and timing.

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command and former Pacific Air Forces commander, said the Air Force’s only EW wing keeps the Combat Air Force ready by assessing spectrum-based combat capabilities.

“Electromagnetic spectrum operations are a significant part of how we operate,” Wilsbach said last year. “The operations that are happening today in the Pacific will inform the data and what will happen here at the 350th. That data will in turn be used by those same operators for an advantage against China.”

Caine also called the Pentagon’s current EW ranges “inadequate.”

“Despite some investments, these ranges have not kept pace with current technology or the threat environments in which we expect to fight,” Caine said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 1. “Against the most advanced adversaries, the joint force would likely face challenges protecting itself from electromagnetic attack.”

The Air Force has EW training ranges at Eglin, as well as one in Idaho, three in Nevada, two in South Carolina, one in Texas and one in Utah. Snyder Electronic Warfare Range, near Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, is used by all the services. The Nevada Test and Training Range is used during large-scale Red Flag exercises.

Lockheed Will Not Protest NGAD Award to Boeing, Looks to ‘Supercharge’ F-35 Instead

April 22, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin will not protest the Air Force’s selection of Boeing for the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter contract, company president and CEO Jim Taiclet said April 22, explaining that the company now hopes to insert the technology it developed for NGAD into its fifth-generation F-35 and F-22 fighters.

“We are not going to protest the NGAD decision of the U.S. government,” Taiclet said on a company earnings call.

“We did get a classified debrief” from the Air Force on the decision, “and we are taking that feedback internally,” he added, saying that “we are moving forward and moving out on applying all the technologies that we developed for our NGAD bid” into the technology base for the F-35 and F-22.

“I feel that we can have 80 percent of the capability” of an NGAD fighter “potentially, at 50 percent of the cost per unit aircraft, by taking the F-35 chassis and applying numerous advanced technologies, some of which are already in process” in the F-35 Block 4 upgrade, Taiclet said, adding that Lockheed hoped to offer those upgrades “fairly quickly.”

The resulting “supercharged” F-35 will be “kind of a fifth-generation-plus concept for the F-35,” he said, also describing it as transforming the “F-35 chassis … into a Ferrari.”

Taiclet said that the F-35 fleet worldwide numbers about 1,100 aircraft and is expected to reach 3,500 eventually. Company chief financial officer Evan Scott said that Lockheed will deliver between 170 and 190 F-35s in 2025, and that there is a backlog of 350 of the jets.

“There will be 3,500 of those chassis out there, at various stages of technology and capability. We think we can get most of the way to sixth-gen at half the cost,” Scott said.

The cost of the F-35 for the last negotiated lots was about $90 million per aircraft for the F-35A version used by the Air Force, but the Joint Program Office has not yet disclosed the unit cost under Lots 18 and 19. The two sides have reached a “handshake agreement” on the lots but not finalized a contract. Both the JPO and Lockheed have warned that unit costs will be higher because of inflation and the greater capabilities inherent to the coming lots of airplanes.

The exact cost of NGAD is still unclear, but officials have previously suggested it could be “hundreds of millions of dollars” per airplane. If so, that would mean future “Ferrari” versions of the F-35 could cost $150 million per copy or so.

Taiclet said he would expect the resulting airplane to be exportable, but that, for now, the government may choose to export those additional capabilities on a case-by-case basis. The design work going into the upgrades is being done with an eye toward exportability, he added.

Taiclet singled out work Lockheed has done to provide long-range passive infrared target detection and tracking to the F-22 and NGAD—as well as long-range missile work—as among the prime technologies that could be ported to the F-35.

Taiclet did not elaborate on the internal decision not to protest the NGAD award, which had a potential value of $20 billion over the next five years and potentially another $40 billion in production. However, he emphasized that Lockheed’s missile capabilities for the so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense program are uniquely suited to the effort and in production now, suggesting a large infusion of business in that area to compensate for not receiving the NGAD nod.

Had Lockheed protested the award, the Government Accountability Office would have had 100 calendar days to review the competition and determine whether the Air Force had fairly selected Boeing over Lockheed. That effort can now go forward without further delay.

With the loss of NGAD, and having already been eliminated from the Navy’s F/A-XX effort and the first increment of the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, Lockheed is—for now—locked out of all publicly acknowledged advanced aircraft programs.

However, former Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said on a recent podcast that NGAD is not structured to give one company a monopoly on advanced fighter work.

Hunter said the award to Boeing was for “‘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.”

The concept for the CCA program is similar; companies not selected for Increment 1 are competing for Increment 2, though the Air Force has not said yet what exactly it’s looking for in that increment.

The NGAD award to Boeing was announced by President Donald Trump at the White House on March 21. The dollar value of the engineering and manufacturing development contract was not disclosed due to secrecy concerns, but the service later said Boeing had offered the “best overall value” on the project.

Hunter and former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, also on the podcast, said that Lockheed and Boeing’s proposals for NGAD were technically “close,” which might have given Lockheed grounds for a protest on other considerations, such as cost and prior performance. While Hunter said Boeing’s approach was “more creative,” Kendall said that “Lockheed could have won this.”

Air Force Plans to Start Building New Over-the-Horizon Radars in Oregon in 2028

April 21, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Air Force has tapped sites in Oregon to build its first two new Over-the-Horizon Radars, capable of detecting inbound missile threats from up to 4,000 nautical miles away.

In a notice published in the Federal Register last week, the service announced it was initiating an environmental review expected to last two years across two regions in the state.

Compared to other conventional radars, the OTHR enables long-range detection by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere—starting roughly 50 miles above Earth—and beyond the planet’s curvature, allowing it to detect a wide range of threats like bombers, cruise missiles, and surface ships. Once a threat is detected, the radar system passes target location onto other manned or unmanned aircraft, or land-based radars that can reconfirm the type and number of threats.

The radar consists of two main components: the transmitter, which sends out the high-frequency radio waves, and the receiver that captures the reflected signals.

*Homeland Defense Over-the-Horizon Radar Systems 1 and 2*, source: Department of Air Force, https://othrnweis.com/project-overview/

“The proposal is for two transmitters to be in Christmas Valley, Ore., and two receivers in Whitehorse Ranch, Ore.,” a spokesperson for the 366th Fighter Wing, host wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Ida., told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The two sites are approximately 200 miles apart to minimize signal interference between the transmitter and receiver, and Mountain Home would “manage” the systems.

Both locations are unincorporated areas of the state without active government structures. The Christmas Valley area is currently owned and managed by the Oregon Military Department, where the Air Force plans to acquire approximately 2,622 acres to construct the transmitters side by side. The Whitehorse Ranch area, a federally managed region under the Bureau of Land Management, will provide nearly 5,000 acres for the two receivers to be built. Additional infrastructure, including communication cabling and maintenance buildings, will also be built.

The Air Force expects the final environmental statement to wrap up by September 2027, and if the review is favorable, construction on the two radars will begin “at the end of 2028,” the spokesperson added.

If, however, the initiative were not to move forward, the project’s official website states that “threats could approach North America without early detection, resulting in reduced decision time for military and national leaders to deter, de-escalate, or defeat threats, placing North American homeland security at risk.”

The Air Force has been eyeing OTHR radars for years; Gen. Glen VanHerck, the former head of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, has said they will give the U.S. military “better eyes around the world.” After a Chinese spy balloon transited the continental U.S. in early 2023, VanHerck reiterated his call to lawmakers, saying he had a gap in domain awareness technologies and needed OTHR fielded in a few years, not the better part of a decade.

In the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress directed the service to procure up to six OTHRs. However, in June 2024 the Air Force told Congress that it would no longer fund the program in FY24 as planned, postponing the decision to 2026.

VanHerck’s successor, Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, has reiterated the calls for OTHR and a better domain awareness network to detect threats. Earlier this month, Guillot told lawmakers that these radars are “critical to continental defense,” forming, alongside other systems, the “foundation for the Golden Dome construct”—President Trump’s initiative for the nation’s comprehensive missile defense.

“We can’t defeat what we can’t see,” Guillot, told lawmakers April 1. “To that end, I appreciate the department and congressional support for fielding all domain capabilities, such as Airborne Moving Target Indicator satellites, Over the Horizon Radars, the E-7 Wedgetail, and Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS)… Looking forward, NORAD and NORTHCOM modernization is crucial to outpacing our competitors.”

Lockheed Gets $180 Million to Convert Three F-35 Jets to Test Aircraft

April 21, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin received a $180 million contract modification April 21 to convert three F-35s to flight sciences aircraft, the Pentagon announced. The work is needed “to prevent any increase in the test capability gap,” per the contract announcement.

The F-35 Joint Program Office has urged Congress for several years to expand its test fleet, so as to supplement aircraft that are becoming structurally fatigued and maintain a high tempo of testing as the program moves from the Technology Refresh 3 program to Block 4 improvements.

The contract modification “adds scope to procure materials, parts, and components in support of the conversion,” the Pentagon said. Conversion of production-representative aircraft to flight sciences test aircraft typically involves adding equipment such as spin chutes, cameras, load-sensing instrumentation, telemetry gear, and other equipment, while removing some hardware not needed for the test function.

The converted aircraft will also “allow for future, holistic flight science testing of Block 4 capabilities for the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, non-U.S. Department of Defense program partners, and Foreign Military Sales customers,” the Pentagon said. The work is to be completed by December 2028.

Delays in testing for TR-3 led to the government putting a yearlong hold on accepting F-35 deliveries from 2023-2024. The hold was lifted last summer, when program director Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt determined that the TR-3 software was sufficiently stable to allow safe and productive flight operations.

The JPO has identified a current shortage of test aircraft and looming aircraft retirements as partially to blame for delays in testing TR-3. The JPO has also said the scope of the Block 4 upgrade will require a higher test tempo than has been achieved in recent years in order to get operational capability to the field in a timely manner.

The JPO originally planned to convert six aircraft for flight sciences work but increased that number to nine, which are to be sourced from 18th Lot of F-35s. The additional three aircraft were added to the JPO request by an amendment in the fiscal 2025 Air Force budget sponsored by Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). Schmidt told Air & Space Forces Magazine in 2024 that the test team has been supplementing its force with production aircraft, but that these are not the optimal solution for flight sciences testing.

The Government Accountability Office has warned that sourcing the jets from Lot 18 means they likely won’t be delivered until 2029.

The Navy awarded the contract, as it currently has acquisition authority over the program.

New Doc Spells Out How USSF Will Use Space Control to Gain Space Superiority

April 21, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Standoff strike. Defensive escorts. Deception and dispersal.

The Space Force spelled out how it plans to fight a war in space in a new document last week, defining and refreshing many terms already familiar to military planners as USSF leaders seek to “normalize” orbital warfare.

“There’s been this undercurrent of ‘Space is special’ for decades—it’s classified,” said retired Air Force Col. Jennifer Reeves, now a fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “And I think this is trying to do the exact opposite. It’s saying, ‘No, no, we are a warfighting service the way everybody else is a warfighting service. There is a joint lexicon here that applies to us as well, and this is what it is.’ And then they go into a deeper dive on some of the things on how it’s specific in space.”

The new “Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners” lays out Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s vision as proclaimed at the AFA Warfare Symposium that the service would do “whatever it takes” to achieve space superiority.

“Space control comprises the activities required to contest and control the space domain,” the framework states. “The desired outcome of space control operations is space superiority. Space control consists of offensive and defensive actions, referred to as counterspace operations.”

The document lists more than a dozen types of counterspace operation:

Orbital pursuit, or maneuvering close to an adversary spacecraft before employing weapons

Standoff strike, or space- or terrestrial-based long-range fires that can attack without needing to get close to the target

Electromagnetic or cyber attacks on the networks that link an adversary on Earth to their satellites in orbit

Strikes on terrestrial facilities an adversary needs to access space or control its assets in space

Escort, or “Dedicated protection for friendly spacecraft using space-to-space capabilities.”

Suppression of adversary targeting

Passive defensive operations like deception, dispersal, and mobility

The Space Force does not yet have the ability to perform all the operations it lists—the framework mentions hitting terrestrial targets with space-based fires, for example—but by taking an expansive approach, the service is preparing Guardians—and the rest of the Pentagon—to think differently about how they use space, said retired Space Force Col. Charles Galbreath, also a fellow with the Mitchell Institute.

“In five years, we’ll look back at this document and say, ‘We have evolved our thinking even further,’” Galbreath said. “So this is a good snapshot and a forward vector, because some of these things are not here today, but they are things that people are thinking about and that might be essential. And they’re also things that our adversaries could do to us.”

The document dives into the functions necessary to perform counterspace operations, such as communication, maneuver, intelligence, command and control, and targeting—all familiar terms in joint doctrine.

“It’s trying to say, ‘OK, Space Force planners, these are the terms you should be using when we’re talking about warfighting in space,’ and to help organize our thinking and our plans and strategies,” Galbreath said.

At the same time, it acknowledges space-specific considerations. Planners have to develop new rules of engagement and measures of effectiveness, and consider the physics of spaceflight and the impact of debris in orbit.

“It’s this balance of trying to use the common lexicon so everyone understands where we are,” Reeves said. “But then on the other side, there are some unique characteristics of the domain, much like there are unique characteristics of every domain … that we have to take into consideration.”

Space Superiority

The new framework defines terms and their importance for the joint force.

“Space superiority allows military forces in all domains to operate at a time and place of their choosing without prohibitive interference from space or counterspace threats, while also denying the same to an adversary,” the document states.

Given the vastness of space, it is unlikely any actor will achieve complete superiority at all times. So the framework calls for “concentrating effects” and doing so at“the time and place of our choosing,” just as Air Force leaders do for air superiority.

Achieving superiority is fundamental to the rest of the U.S. military, Saltzman asserts in the document. “Space superiority is not only a necessary precondition for Joint Force success but also something for which we must be prepared to fight,” Saltzman wrote. “Gained and maintained, it unlocks superiority in other domains, fuels Coalition lethality, and fortifies troop survivability. It is therefore the basis from which the Joint Force projects power, deters aggression, and secures the homeland.”

DOD’s Transgender Ban Is Caught in Courts, Leaving Some Troops in Limbo

April 21, 2025 | By David Roza

Hundreds, or possibly thousands, of transgender service members have returned to work after two judges ordered preliminary injunctions blocking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ban of transgender service members and recruits. But the long-term future for transgender service members will remain uncertain until these and possibly other cases play out in the courts.

Two U.S. District Court judges, one in the District of Columbia and the other in the Western District of Washington state, each ordered preliminary injunctions in March, blocking the ban from being enforced pending judicial review of the legality of the order.

The Pentagon appealed both orders. The D.C. appeals court granted an administrative stay, putting the lower court’s ruling on hold March 27. But it did so with a caveat: The government may not start discharging transgender service members while the court continues to review the government’s request for an emergency stay. The D.C. appeals court will hear oral arguments on that question on April 22.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, reviewing the other case, denied the government’s request for an administrative stay, then denied the government’s request for an emergency stay on April 18.

Following the March ruling, in order to comply with the injunction, the military services ordered back to work those transgender troops who had been placed on administrative leave prior to the order. They also suspended a policy requiring transgender military members to follow the dress, grooming, and physical fitness standards that applied to their birth sex. At the same time, the military paused both voluntary and involuntary separations for transgender troops, and lifted its hold on shipping transgender recruits to basic military training. A requirement that transgender members use the personal pronouns and bathrooms appropriate to their sex at birth was also suspended.

Now that the ninth circuit has denied the emergency stay, the ban cannot be enforced, said Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights and one of the lead attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the D.C. case.

Oral arguments for a stay order, such as those scheduled for April 22, are unusual; such cases are usually decided based on written briefs, Minter said. “I think [the appeals judges] are just trying to be extremely careful and make sure they issue the most well-informed, thoughtful decision they can,” he said.

The government can still appeal to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay. Either way, fully resolving the case at that level could take years. A preliminary injunction blocking a 2017 attempt to limit transgender military service took two years to resolve, with the Supreme Court issuing an unsigned 5-4 decision to stay that lower-court ruling. A similar outcome is likely this time, as the court’s conservative majority has only grown since then.

There is no statute barring the military from discriminating based on gender identity, said retired Air Force Col. Joshua Kastenberg, a former Air Force judge now teaching law at the University of New Mexico.

“From a legal perspective of where the law is right now, the plaintiffs have a higher hill to climb than the administration does on this,” Kastenberg said.

For now, plaintiffs in the D.C. case, including 15 transgender troops and five recruits, would like to put the ban behind them and focus on work and training, said Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, which is also representing the plaintiffs. That could be more difficult for transgender troops who accepted voluntary separation offers from the administration earlier this year. All such separations are presently on hold.

“It remains a fraught time in limbo and every individual is facing different circumstances,” said Col. Bree Fram, a transgender Guardian who noted she was sharing her personal views and not speaking on behalf of the Space Force or the government.

The Ban

President Donald Trump issued an executive order soon after his inauguration requiring the Pentagon to establish rules barring transgender individuals from military service. “It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”

Gender dysphoria refers to the stress or anxiety people can feel, sometimes to severe levels, when their gender identity does not match the sex or gender they were assigned at birth. Not all transgender individuals feel gender dysphoria, but for those who do, transitioning to a different gender can help, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Transitioning can be accomplished through behavioral changes, such as dress and mannerisms, or through medical interventions, such as hormone replacement therapy or gender-transition surgery.

In February, a senior defense official said there were 4,240 service members known to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and about 1,000 members have received gender-transition surgery since 2014; it is unclear how many of them are still serving. But not all transgender troops are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and not all those who do receive surgery. Estimates of the number of transgender individuals currently serving in the military range from between 1,320 and 6,630, according to a RAND study, to 15,500 according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which bills itself as “the leading research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.”

There are no systems for tracking precise numbers of transgender service members, said Alex Wagner, who was Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs from 2022 to January 2025. “There are only two sexes specified in [the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System], and our uniform, grooming, and PT standards are based on those,” Wagner said.

Courts generally defer to the military’s judgment on matters of national security, wrote judges Ana Reyes and Benjamin Settle, of the D.C. District Court and the Western District of Washington, respectively. In this case, however, they decided that deference was “unjustified” considering the possible harm to the plaintiffs’ livelihood, the alleged violation of equal protection and due process guarantees under the Fifth Amendment, and what they described as a lack of evidence to prove the government’s case.

The government agrees “that Plaintiffs are mentally and physically fit to serve, have ‘served honorably,’ and ‘have satisfied the rigorous standards’ demanded of them,” Reyes wrote in her opinion. “Plaintiffs, they acknowledge, have ‘made America safer.’ So why discharge them and other decorated soldiers? Crickets from Defendants on this key question.”

Reyes, a Biden appointee, issued her injunction March 18, and Settle, who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush, issued his March 27.

Between the two cases, the plaintiffs included a Navy fighter pilot, an Army Special Forces medic, an Army artillery officer, an Air Force weapons officer, a Space Force satellite operator, and an ammunition loader on an AC-130 gunship, among other troops.

NGAD Images Doctored to Hide Most, If Not All, True Design Features

April 18, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Images of the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, released by the Air Force on March 21 when the program was awarded to Boeing, are mere placeholders and aren’t intended to accurately portray the aircraft, despite showing only a small portion of it, Air Force and industry officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The idea is to keep adversaries guessing about the true nature of the NGAD design.

The images show a stealthy-looking aircraft from its nose and cockpit back to the leading edges of the wings, which display pronounced dihedral, or an upward-angle. They also show canard foreplanes, which appear to be fixed, not articulated. No air intakes are shown.

Although many aviation experts have penned extensive analyses of the F-47 images, particularly of the canards—the use of which would be difficult to square with the notion of the F-47 as an “extremely low observable” design—they should be “taken with a large grain of salt,” an Air Force official said.

“We aren’t giving anything away in those pictures,” he said. “You’ll have to be patient” to see what it really looks like, he said, adding “Is there a resemblance? Maybe.”

A former senior Pentagon official, asked at the time of the F-47 announcement about the unusual canard and wing configuration, replied, “Why would you assume that’s the actual design?”

Sources said that, in anticipation of the NGAD announcement, Boeing artists produced images that already deliberately distorted some of the NGAD’s features, and the Air Force then further altered them. Boeing Defense, Space, and Security does not use any of the released images on its website and did not include them in its NGAD announcement press releases.

An Air Force spokesperson noted that the two images are available on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), where they are labeled as “artist renderings.” An Air Force spokesperson said they are “free to use.”

Shown is a graphical artist rendering of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Platform. U.S. Air Force graphic

As for the canards, the former defense official said “it’s possible to have canards and be stealthy,” but stopped short of saying that they are indeed a feature of the F-47.

China’s J-20 Mighty Dragon fighter, whose stealth Air Force officials have characterized as being in the same class as that of the F-22, employs a canard and delta wing design, but deflection of those control surfaces have to be managed extremely carefully so as to not to break the angles required to be low-observable to radar.

The Air Force has a long history of withholding imagery of stealth aircraft until the real articles are about to break cover and fly where they can be seen—and photographed—by the public. But even then, the Air Force has consistently shown only distorted pictures in the early days of revealing new stealth aircraft.

B-2

In April 1988, the Air Force released the first official image of the Northrop B-2A stealth bomber; a painting that blurred-over the aircraft’s exhausts and presented the aircraft from an angle that made it difficult to determine its true wing angle of sweep, size, and intake configuration.

F-117

In November 1988, Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard displayed a heavily doctored photograph of the then-secret Lockheed F-117 stealth strike aircraft at a press briefing. The first image was foreshortened to disguise the true angle of sweep of the F-117’s wings, and create ambiguity about its engine intakes, exhausts, sensor apertures and size. The tactic was so successful that model companies rushed to production with kits that featured broad wings like those later seen on the B-2 bomber, rather than the true narrow, arrowhead shape of the F-117. The Air Force only fully revealed the F-117 in 1990, because the jet, which had previously only flown at night and mainly in restricted airspace, was about to participate in daytime training missions.

F-22

Lockheed used fictional but consistent imagery of a delta-wing fighter with canards in its late 1980s advertising during the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition. Only when the Air Force officially rolled out the YF-22 in 1990 was the true, conventional planform of the fighter revealed.

B-21

The first artist’s rendering of the B-21 Raider, released in 2016, obscured the air intakes and exhausts, and left most of the cockpit transparencies in shadow; again presenting the aircraft from an angle that made it hard to determine its size and wing angle of sweep. Subsequent artist’s concepts were released in 2021 revealing the unusual configuration of the cockpit transparencies, and more detail of the depth of the keel and shape of the wings, but continued to conceal the intakes and exhausts. It was not until the aircraft’s rollout in December 2022 that details of the nose were revealed. At that event, photographers were strictly limited to photographing the aircraft from the front only. And it was not until the first flight from Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif. facility in November, 2023—not announced ahead of time—that the true shape of the planform and first details of the exhaust were captured by non-government photographers on the airfield fenceline. The Air Force did not release official images of the B-21 in flight until several months later.

The only departure from this pattern involved the Joint Strike Fighter. The companies in that contest were free to share artist’s concepts of their aircraft during the late 1990s, and the nearly-final configuration of the F-35 was displayed at the time Lockheed Martin was selected as the competition winner in 2001. At that time, however, there was less concern about adversaries gaining insight from such imagery: Russia’s military was considered moribund from lack of funds, while China was not yet considered capable of exploiting such information.