Kendall: CCA Increment 2 Shouldn’t Be ‘Exquisite,’ But Better than Increment 1

Jan. 8, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Analyses and wargames indicate the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program should not be an “exquisite” aircraft—meaning very stealthy and equipped with many sensors and weapons—but it should have more capability than Increment 1, and an additional cost of 20-30 percent would be acceptable, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Air & Space Forces Magazine this week.

The CCA program is meant to produce semi-autonomous combat aircraft to fly in formations alongside with manned platforms, carrying extra weapons or, in later iterations, acting on their own or in concert with other CCAs on sensing or attack missions.

Yet the capabilities and the cost of these “wingman” drones remain a frequent topic of discussion among Air Force and industry leaders.

For the first increment, at least, Kendall has said the Air Force is shooting for a cost per airframe that is a “fraction” of the price of a crewed F-35, somewhere between $25-30 million each.

Preliminary work has begun on a second increment, but to date, Air Force officials had declined to define the characteristics it wants for this second bath, with the possibilities ranging from an even simpler and cheaper aircraft than Increment 1 to a very sophisticated platform that could penetrate deep inside contested airspace and conduct kinetic attacks.

Increment 2 should “definitely” not be “exquisite,” Kendall said.

“The idea here is affordable mass,” he explained during an extensive exit interview. Wargames and analyses have shown that CCAs in large numbers multiply combat options for the Air Force and impose a significant cost on any adversary, who must take each one seriously and dedicate missiles or countermeasures to stop them, Kendall said. Making a highly capable—and expensive—CCA would defeat that value, he said.

Yet Kendall also seemed to pour cold water on the notion that Increment 2 will be simpler and cheaper than Increment 1.

“I think, personally, something that has some increase in cost over Increment 1 would not be outrageous,” he said, citing a cost increase for the second iteration as “20 or 30 percent, something like that. But, again, it depends upon the mix, right? What capabilities do you put on every aircraft, every CCA? What do you distribute?”

The Air Force has typically equipped its fighters with “all the subsystems necessary for that fighter to essentially operate alone: its own sensors, its own [electronic warfare], its own countermeasures,” Kendall said.

But in the future, the secretary said, the service may instead choose to split up those capabilities among different CCAs as well as the manned fighter. An enemy would have to assume all the CCAs are similarly capable, “and that’s a substantial advantage for the user,” he said.

Kendall may also have been hinting at some of the options being explored for the Next-Generation Air Dominance system, which he characterized as a crewed successor to the F-22. Kendall has left decision-making on the way forward for the NGAD to his successors in the Trump administration.

CCA Increment 1—which has two variants being developed by Anduril Industries and General Atomics—is “moving forward really well,” Kendall reported.

“We’re going to get that fielded within the next few years. We’re going to get a lot of experience with that. What I have seen in simulations with our operators shows that it has enormous operational payoff, and we’ll get more experience with actually using them in operational units and operational exercises, and so on. We’re going to learn an awful lot from that,” he said.

At the same time, Kendall also wants to see updates and improvements. For the autonomy technology that underpins CCAs, the Air Force is still running programs like the X-62 Vista and the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model–Autonomy Flying Testbed program, or VENOM-AFT.

For sensors, weapons, and airframes, work is “well underway” on Increment 2, and the Air Force is “sorting through different configurations for Increment 2, and what we want to do there, to get full advantage” Kendall said.

However, he reiterated that the Trump administration will make the final choice on what CCA Increment 2 looks like.

Ultimately, though, Kendall said he regards launching the CCA program and getting the first increment on contract is one of the signature programmatic achievements of his tenure as secretary. The CCA is “a transformative capability for the Department, for the Air Force,” he said.

New F-15 Electronic Warfare System Starts Full Production

Jan. 8, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force has cleared a new F-15 electronic warfare system for full-rate production and awarded a $615.8 million contract to Boeing to install the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS).

EPAWSS comprises two kits manufactured by BAE Systems, which consist of “integrated radar warning, geolocation, situational awareness, and self-protection solutions,” according to the company. EPAWSS is standard equipment on the new F-15EX Eagle II, but the Air Force is also upgrading 99 F-15E Strike Eagles with the advanced technology, as well.

Boeing is responsible for modifying the F-15 and will be installing the system.

EPAWSS is the technology that turns the F-15EX into what some have called a generation 4.5 fighter, positioning it between conventional fourth-gen F-15s and fifth-gen F-22s and F-35s. The Air Force says EPAWSS can enable equipped jets to “deny, degrade, deceive, disrupt, and defeat radio frequency (RF) and electro-optical/infrared threat systems within contested and highly contested environments.”

Growing competition in the electromagnetic spectrum has set off something of an EW arms race, and the Air Force and its suppliers have been mum about specific EPAWSS capabilities. One EPAWSS capability officials have described is “cognitive” EW—the ability for the system to understand new threats and adapt its response without human input.

EPAWSS includes two kits. Group A kits comprise underlying parts needed to support the upgrade, while Group B kits include EPAWSS’ main components. Boeing’s contract covers “procurement of Group A and Group B kits, system engineering program management, and interim contractor support lay-in material,” the Pentagon said.

Work will be performed at Boeing’s St. Louis facilities, where the F-15EX is built, and in Nashua, N.H., home of BAE’s Electronic Systems Division.

The contract announcement did not specify the number of EPAWSS kits included. It did, however, state that procurement funds for the project will come from fiscal 2023, 2024, and 2025 investments. According to budget documents, the Air Force asked for 26 sets in fiscal 2023, 19 sets in 2024, and 21 in 2025. But documents also showed plans to install 4 sets in 2023, 14 in 2024, and 19 in 2025.

After 2025, the Air Force still plans to buy five more full EPAWSS kits, plus five Group B kits for the test aircraft that were already modified during the system’s development. Fifty-five fighters will get the kits installed over the course of 2026-2028.

Meanwhile, the service also plans to buy 98 to 144 F-15EX fighters—a number that has fluctuated in recent budget cycles. as Air Force and Congressional leaders have debated how many are needed.

Officials have described the F-15’s current EW system as “functionally obsolete” against modern threats, making EPAWSS vital to jam and/or spoof adversaries’ radars and signals to evade detection. The technology shares capabilities developed for the F-35, whose powerful EW system have earned rave reviews. BAE also manufactures that system.

F-16 External Fuel Tank Falls into Florida Neighborhood, No Injuries Reported

Jan. 8, 2025 | By David Roza

No injuries were reported after a 300-gallon external fuel tank fell off an F-16 fighter into a residential neighborhood outside Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Jan. 7, a base spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The tank fell off at around 11 a.m. and landed in Niceville, just 3.5 miles northeast of the base, the spokesperson said.

Eglin uses manned F-16s to test new weapons, uncrewed QF-16s as aerial target drones, and just recently received modified F-16s to test autonomous flying technology as part of the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model – Autonomy Flying Testbed program.

The spokesperson could not say to which unit the mishap aircraft belonged but did say it was manned and the base later confirmed it is assigned to the 96th Test Wing. An investigation is underway.

“Eglin authorities are cleaning up the area and taking measures needed to ensure the fuel tank is safely removed,” the base public affairs office said in a press release. The base will fly a small drone over the area to survey the impact zone.

Photos posted online by local media outlet Mid Bay News show what appears to be the centerline fuel tank that hangs from the middle of the F-16’s fuselage, but the base spokesperson could not immediately confirm that was the specific type of tank that fell. The Eglin public affairs office later said in the release that it was a 300-gallon fuel tank.

Based on the photos, the tank landed in between two homes, a little over a quarter mile away from an elementary school.

On Facebook, the popular unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco page posted photos allegedly showing the F-16 after it landed at Eglin with its center fuel tank missing.

“Only by the grace of God, it landed between two houses,” Niceville City Manager David Deitch told the Mid Bay News, which also reported “a strong smell of jet fuel” in the area.

Many service members are exposed to jet fuel throughout their careers, but the long-term health impacts of such exposure is not yet clear, according to a 2023 presentation by the VA.

The incident came about four weeks after an exercise which saw first responders with the Eglin-based 96th Test Wing practice responding to a “large-scale aircraft accident” with outside agencies.

Late last year, the Air Force Chief of Safety Maj. Gen. Sean M. Choquette rolled out a new effort that requires aircraft maintainers to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so they can access more information about costly accidents. The move was in response to an increase in ground mishaps involving maintenance, aircraft towing, and other flight line work. The NDA is meant to give maintainers the same timely access to safety investigation findings that aircrew members already enjoy, he said.

“We said, ‘hey, [maintainers] need to be brought into the fold here, because ground operations mishaps were increasing, and they need to be better trained on where mistakes are being made,’” Choquette told reporters in October.

This story has been updated with more details from Eglin Air Force Base. It will continue to be updated as more details become available.

Biden Admin Prepares ‘Substantial’ Final Aid Package to Ukraine

Jan. 7, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Biden administration is preparing to announce its “substantial” final package of military assistance to Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, defense officials said Jan. 7.

The military assistance, which is to be drawn from existing U.S. stocks, will be detailed when Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III convenes the 25th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Jan. 9. That coalition of some 50 countries was established to coordinate aid to Kyiv.

But Pentagon officials acknowledge they will not be able to spend all of the funds they have on hand to help Ukraine before Trump assumes the presidency.

“There will be more than a couple of billion dollars remaining in PDA assistance for future use after Jan. 20,” one senior defense official told a small group of reporters, referring to the Presidential Drawdown Authority used to replenish U.S. stocks of weapons given to Kyiv.

As Russian forces continue to make small advances in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian troops counterattack in Russia’s Kursk province, the future of the conflict may be entering a critical phase.

Trump vowed during the presidential campaign to quickly negotiate an end to the war, which is estimated to have led to more than one million dead and wounded on both sides,

But Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little interest in a negotiated compromise.

Trump has named an envoy to pursue potential talks with Moscow, retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg. But the willingness of the incoming administration to continue military support to Kyiv is unclear, and Trump has recently trained his national security focus on his hopes to buy Greenland and his complaints over Panama’s administration of its canal.

The uncertain prospects for diplomacy over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have spurred a debate over whether the Biden administration moved too slowly to provide Kyiv with sophisticated weapons, such as F-16 fighters and ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles.

Critics have argued the U.S. should have provided Ukraine with key weapons systems like the F-16s and ATACMS before Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in 2023, which failed to achieve a breakthrough. The F-16s, those critics say, would have helped Ukraine to better defend its skies from Russia’s aerial assaults of missiles, drones, and glide bombs.

Pentagon officials pushed back against the notion that its approach of gradually providing more capable weapons hampered Ukraine’s defenses.

There is “a misperception that I believe is out there, that we, the United States, should have done more sooner to support Ukraine’s defense,” a second senior defense official said.

“What Ukraine needed in 2022 was, first and foremost, the capabilities to fight off the Russian assault on Kyiv,” the first defense official said. “So that was the focus, and that was driven by what the Ukrainians needed in 2022, and that included countries being willing to send Soviet legacy aircraft because that’s what Ukrainian pilots knew how to fly. In 2022, they didn’t know how to fly things like F-16s.”

Kyiv had appealed for the Western aircraft and proposed in 2022 that aircrew training begin on the multirole F-16s even if the aircraft themselves would not arrive right away.

Some 79 F-16s have been pledged to Ukraine by the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway after the U.S. gave approval for the transfers in summer 2023. Ukrainian pilots have been trained on F-16s in the U.S. and Europe by a coalition of allies. Denmark and the Netherlands, the most vocal supporters of providing Ukraine with F-16s, began delivering used F-16s from their stocks to Ukraine in late summer 2024.

The U.S. also provided ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles in October 2023, but they were not sent until Ukraine’s counteroffensive had begun to run out of steam.

With the conflict gridlocked, the Pentagon said it is up to the Trump administration to determine future Ukraine policy, including what security guarantees Kyiv might receive in a potential peace settlement.

“What we are focused on right now, especially at the Pentagon, is providing Ukraine with the defense capabilities that we can provide in the time we have, including putting things on contract that will be delivered throughout 2025 and into 2026 in order to build that capability so that Ukraine can be in the strongest possible position if it comes to a negotiation,” the first defense official said. “Our calculation is that Putin is not one to give up something that he doesn’t have to give up, and Putin is going to be most impressed as he faces a negotiation, and he faces a war in which he has not yet achieved his objectives, and which the costs are building up on him. He is going to be more inclined to be reasonable, to listen to Ukrainian requirements, the stronger Ukraine is on the battlefield.”

Kendall: Reveal of New Chinese Aircraft ‘Hasn’t Really Changed’ USAF Plans

Jan. 7, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The appearance of new Chinese combat aircraft in recent weeks—potentially a new bomber and medium bomber, a smaller, fighter-size aircraft, and a new AWACS platform, among others—didn’t influence current Air Force leadership’s recent decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance program or the service’s broader strategic outlook, Secretary Frank Kendall said.

In an exit interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine, Kendall said the newly-revealed Chinese aircraft “have not had an impact” on how his team has approached NGAD; Kendall paused the program in summer 2024, launched a review of its requirements, and ultimately deferred a decision on the program’s future to the incoming Trump administration and the next civilian leaders of the Air Force.

“I’ve been watching China modernize their military for quite a while,” Kendall said. “They’re working aggressively to build a military designed to keep the U.S. out of the Western Pacific, and I think, over time, they have more ambitions than even that.”

Strategically, “they’ve already shown that they’re going to modernize their strategic forces and dramatically increase their inventory of nuclear weapons. And in space, they’re doing similar things, right? They’re really militarizing space at a high rate. So that was already baked into all the things we were thinking about, and the arrival of those … airplanes, visible to the public, hasn’t really changed that,” he said.

Indeed, Kendall said he still has no regrets about punting an NGAD decision to the new administration.

“Anything I did with a couple of months left in office was like to be reconsidered anyway, but it would be much harder to change direction” if contracts were awarded and the program was moved forward, he said. “Keeping that trade space open … was a much more efficient thing to do. It was just the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Kendall and his team will leave behind an extensive analysis of NGAD for their successors, allowing them to understand their options and then make their own choice based on their own strategic priorities.

NGAD, being a very expensive program, will be weighed against other high considerations, Kendall said, noting that there are “strategic priorities” for both the Air and Space Forces that must be addressed and weighed against various NGAD approaches.

“What motivated us to take another look [at NGAD] was the affordability” Kendall said, noting that there were other missions to which the service wanted to devote added resources such as “more aggressive counter-space capabilities, airbase protection, particularly our forward air bases.”

Yet affordability wasn’t the only issue, Kendall said, reiterating concerns that changing threats and technology also forced a reconsideration.

“My operators were not 100 percent sure they had the right airplane,” he said. “And I agree with that. I think it’s really worthwhile to think carefully about what is essentially an F-22 replacement. Is that really the right new design?”

The stakes of the decision are high, because “we’re not going to get another sixth-generation program any time soon. This is a tens of billions of dollars commitment, and it’s a multidecade commitment, so you really want to be sure you’re pursuing the best operational capability with those resources,” the secretary added.

Asked what recommendation his blue-ribbon panel of stealth experts—including analysts, former Chiefs of Staff, and senior generals—came up with regarding NGAD, Kendall said they reached “a consensus that there are a number of other things that we need to fund” but if resources are available, “then it would still be beneficial to have an NGAD-like aircraft.”

Kendall could not go into detail because of classification, but said several alternatives were considered.

“We looked at something that’s more of a lower-cost, multi-role kind of a capability. We looked at something that’s more tailored to work with [Collaborative Combat Aircraft], although, of course, NGAD could do that. And we looked at some other ’out of the box’” ideas, he said, adding that “some of them might be worth pursuing independently.”

Off-Road Reaper: Air Force MQ-9 Roughs It for ACE Exercise

Jan. 7, 2025 | By David Roza

Over its 20 years of service, the MQ-9 Reaper drone has typically landed on paved runways, where it is rearmed and refueled by a large group of maintainers and support staff.

But a recent exercise saw Air Force Special Operations Command land an MQ-9 on a dirt strip in New Mexico on Dec. 16, where it was rearmed, refueled, and launched again by a small group of Airmen. The tactic is part of Agile Combat Employment, the Air Force’s strategy to send small groups of Airmen to many different remote or austere operating locations in a conflict with China or Russia so that they are more difficult to target.

“In the future fight, we assess we will no longer be able to rely exclusively on the main operating bases that have persisted,” the flight commander of the 1st Special Operations Mission Sustainment Team (SOMST), which met the Reaper on the ground, said in a Dec. 31 press release. The release did not state the commander’s name or rank.

“Operating in austere environments anytime, anyplace, and anywhere is critical,” the commander said. “It enables commanders to have options—something critically needed in special operations forces.”

air force mq-9 — A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper completes a 180-degree turn on a dirt surface during Exercise Reaper Castillo at Melrose Air Force Range, New Mexico, Dec. 16, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gracelyn Hess)

Exercise Reaper Castillo took place at Melrose Air Force Range, N.M., near Cannon Air Force Base. A pilot and sensor operator controlled the drone from Hurlburt Field, Fla., more than 1,100 miles east.

Officials from the Hurlburt-based 1st Special Operations Wing told Air & Space Forces Magazine it could not say how many Airmen supported the MQ-9 at the dirt strip or how quickly they turned the aircraft around, citing security reasons. But they did say the Reaper needed no physical alternations to land on the dirt.

Reaper Castillo is the latest in a series of experiments to break the MQ-9 out of the conventional procedures and operations in which it has been used over the past 20 years.

Typically, Reaper missions involve crews operating the aircraft from ground control stations hundreds or thousands of miles away, while crews closer to the aircraft handle takeoff and landing, where the shorter signal delay reduces the chance for catastrophic error in those dangerous phases of flight.

But since at least 2021, the Air Force has begun to let the Reaper land itself using an autopilot function known as the automatic takeoff and landing capability (ATLC). That cuts the aircraft’s footprint by about 55 people and lot of equipment. Past exercises in New Mexico and the Pacific shrunk the footprint to just 10 Airmen and a pallet and a half of gear, small enough to fit aboard relatively light transports such as CV-22 Osprey and C-130 Hercules.

Besides auto takeoffs and landings, then-AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind said in 2023 that he envisioned a future where Reapers act as “capital ships” from which smaller uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) launch to establish a sensor grid or a communications pathway for the joint force.

The idea was part of a project known as adaptive airborne enterprise, where MQ-9s stretch beyond their traditional role as intelligence and strike platforms to become mobile control centers for a network of sensors, communications devices or loitering munitions for far-flung special operators.

“Can we establish a network that goes 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles?” Bauernfeind said. “I don’t know, we have to work the physics and the tactics, techniques, and procedures to find out how far we can push these networks out that will then give us that grid that we need to support the joint force.”

The vision became reality later that year, when a single crew at Cannon controlled three MQ-9s for about 30 minutes. Six days later, a crew air-launched two smaller drones from an MQ-9 and controlled them with an additional crew member. Reaper Castillo shows the capability could travel far from established bases.

“We have to break out of the mindset that we need a huge, paved runway with co-located launch and recovery aircrews,” the Reaper Castillo mission commander said in the Dec. 31 release. The commander’s rank and name were also not provided. “If we can free ourselves from the traditional mindset, it makes MQ-9 combat reach nearly limitless.”

Recent shootdowns of MQ-9s in the Middle East over the past few months are a reminder that the slow-moving Reaper may not be able to evade anti-air weapons in a near-peer conflict. Networks of smaller drones controlled by the Reaper may extend its reach and help keep the $30 million aircraft out of range of those weapons. Either way, it beats the risk of sending a human pilot to do the job, said the mission commander.

“The MQ-9 is extremely relevant in today’s fight and will be in the future as well,” the commander said. “It allows us to go places and do things that we cannot risk sending manned aircraft—such as high-threat environments.”

Airmen assigned to the 1st Special Operations Support Squadron Mission Sustainment Team refuel an MQ-9 Reaper assigned to the 1st Special Operations Wing at Melrose Air Force Range, New Mexico, Dec. 16, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gracelyn Hess)

Space Force Eyes New Jam-Resistant Tactical SATCOM Options

Jan. 7, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Two competing prototype payloads, developed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing and both set to launch in 2025, aim to open a new era of secure, jam-resistant tactical communications.

Northrop has finished assembly and testing of its payload for the Protected Tactical SATCOM-Prototype (PTS-P) program and is now working on integrating the system onto one of its ESPAStar buses, the company said Jan. 6. Boeing is in the advanced stages of integrating its PTS-P payload with its new Wideband Global SATCOM satellite, WGS-11, a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The Space Force has sought more secure communications solutions for several years and sought to ramp up the effort in its fiscal 2025 budget request. PTS-P seeks to develop a secure communications system impervious to adversary jamming. The prototypes will employ new cryptography, signals, and more. How the variants perform will influence how USSF proceeds with a program projected to cost some $2 billion over the next five years, according to budget documents.

The intensity of electronic warfare jamming in the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the need for jam-resistant satellite signals, but the Space Force program dates back even further. USSF’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites provide jam-resistant tactical and strategic comms today, but the Space Force plans to split its tactical and strategic requirements in the future.

Evolved Strategic SATCOM for nuclear command and control and other strategic missions will handle one set of signals, while USSF’s Protected Anti-Jam Tactical SATCOM (PATS) family of systems, includes PTS-P and the Protected Tactical Waveform and ground infrastructure, called the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service, will support tactical requirements.

Both Northrop Grumman and Boeing passed a preliminary design review for PTS-P in 2020, and the Space Force awarded prototype contracts in 2021. Northrop’s version passed its critical design review in September 2021, and will be a “free flyer” with its own dedicated satellite, an ESPAStarHP bus. Boeing’s version completed its critical design review in 2022, with the decision made then to host it on the WGS-11 satellite. (Sharing payloads is one way of the Space Force is holding down costs, as with the Enhanced Polar SATCOM-Recapitalization payloads, which are hosted on a Norwegian satellite launched in 2024.

Boeing’s PTS-P payload will supplement WGS-11’s main mission. The WGS constellation provides high-bandwidth global communications coverage, which lacks advanced anti-jamming capabilities. Congress funded the newest WGS satellites, the 11th and 12th in the series, in 2018. Boeing and Space Force officials say the newest iteration will be able to direct its signals in a narrower beam, making it harder to spoof or jam its signals.

A Boeing spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that PTS-P will be able to demonstrate its prototype technology even as the rest of the WGS satellite operates, then transition to become fully operational after the demonstration if needed.

The Space Force has split the PTS program into two phases: PTS-Prototype and PTS-Resilient. Even as Northrop and Boeing are working on PTS-P, they are competing for PTS-R, which will operationalize the technologies demonstrated in the prototypes. The plan is to create two payloads “with full signal processing and switching capability that allows direct connectivity between users,” and that can either orbit on their own dedicated satellites or be hosted on other spacecraft.

On top of that, the Space Force is also working on what it calls PTS-Global, which “bridges the gap between the more focused capabilities provided by PTS-R and the broadly available but also the lower assured access capabilities provided by existing/emerging MILSATCOM and commercial services,” according to budget documents.

The Space Force is seeking nearly $250 million to get started on PTS-Global in the fiscal 2025 budget, which has yet to gain final approval. That budget would also fund PTS-Resilient for source selection this year, with the goal of launching satellites in fiscal 2029 at a total cost of some $2.14 billion over five years.

Has China’s Secret H-20 Stealth Bomber Broken Cover?

Jan. 6, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Imagery has appeared on Chinese social media of a new large combat aircraft, apparently making a test flight, which may be China’s new secret H-20 stealth bomber. The location and exact date of the imagery were not disclosed, and the People’s Republic of China has not made an official comment about the footage, the authenticity of which cannot yet be established. The U.S. Department of Defense just recently predicted the bomber would not debut for years.

The grainy imagery is circulating just a week after footage appeared of a new Chinese medium bomber-sized aircraft and a somewhat smaller design, possibly a new fighter or uncrewed combat drone. The new medium bomber and fighter images appeared on the birthday of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, whose birthday has been marked with new aircraft disclosures in the past. There have been fewer social media images of the purported H-20.

The new footage shows a large aircraft that has an overall stealthy diamond shape, in which the planform edges agree with each other’s angles for low radar cross section. It is not, however, a “flying wing,” with distinct and lengthy wings, a large empennage, and a large central fuselage.

The imagery shows a planform very similar to a Chinese wind tunnel model of a “notional” bomber, images of which circulated on the internet in 2022. Those photos showed an aircraft with large-area tail control surfaces that could be shifted to either produce lift or directional stability. Artist’s concepts of that wind tunnel model as an operational bomber have appeared in numerous Chinese and Pacific publications, but Beijing has not commented on their veracity. Chinese senior military leaders have said in the last year, however, that the appearance of the H-20 would be imminent.

Share more pictures. 😎https://t.co/vTo2TSUmR9 pic.twitter.com/ZjGXZwAeIw
— 彩云香江 (@louischeung_hk) August 22, 2022

An industry official noted that the wind tunnel design has an overall shape similar to that of Northrop’s proposed A-12 attack plane program from the 1980s, but with the addition of the large tail control surfaces and scaled to an overall larger size.

The aircraft in this most recent social media video has a sharper angle of wing sweep, with a slight “cranked kite” shape. Curiously, the aircraft is emitting a single contrail, although it is certainly a multi-engined aircraft. The aircraft seems to have a flat exhaust, but details are difficult to discern.

The aircraft was chased by a J-16 fighter, but the two aircraft did not seem to be at the same altitude and were not flying in close formation in the images, making it difficult to estimate the new aircraft’s size.

If the aircraft is indeed the H-20, China is making strides with the bomber faster than expected by the Pentagon, which said in its most recent China military power report that the aircraft might not appear for another 10 years.

That report, released in mid-December, said the H-20, “which may debut sometime in the next decade” is likely to have a 10,000-mile range, allowing China to project power beyond what it calls the “Second Island Chain” of its strategic defense concept. With aerial refueling, the aircraft could “cover the globe,” the Pentagon said, adding “it is expected to employ conventional and nuclear weaponry and feature a stealthy design.”

It was not clear whether the DOD meant that the H-20’s “debut” would mean its appearance in test or its readiness for operations.

The H-20 has been reported to be in the works for at least 10 years. The appearance last week of a possible medium-range bomber prototype seemed to suggest that China is having problems with the H-20 and needed a stopgap solution for a stealthy, penetrating long-range strike platform. The appearance of this new aircraft would contradict that.

Imagery has also appeared in recent days of China’s new KJ-3000, an AWACS-like aircraft based on the Y-20 cargo aircraft, complete with a rotating radome, which also seems to have extensive electronic warfare gear.

A U.S. Air Force official said that service has been “closely monitoring” China’s ongoing military modernization efforts, and said of the appearance of the medium-bomber and fighter aircraft last week that these developments are “consistent with our understanding of China’s strategic objectives and long-term force planning.” But the official also said these new weapons require “highly skilled personnel to actually employ them to the max extent of their capability.”

F-16s, F-15s, and A-10s Conduct Airstrikes Against ISIS in Iraq

Jan. 6, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi forces stepped up their campaign against Islamic State fighters over the past week, including a confrontation with militants holed up in an Iraqi cave, U.S. Central Command said Jan. 6.

F-16s and F-15s carried out airstrikes against ISIS fighters operating in Iraq’s Hamrin Mountains. U.S. Air Force A-10s, which were called in to support ground forces, were successful in killing Islamic State militants fighting in the cave, the command said.

One member of the multinational coalition was killed, and two others were wounded, CENTCOM said. CENTCOM did not identify the nationality of the coalition casualties, but it said no American personnel were injured.

The operations against ISIS come amid concerns that the group is attempting to rebuild its capabilities, including by taking advantage of the confusion in Syria following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

“Partnered operations like these are critical to maintaining pressure on ISIS and preventing the terrorist group from taking advantage of the rapidly changing security environment in the region,” CENTCOM commander Army Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla said in a statement. “The enduring defeat of ISIS is a global effort that relies on our Coalition, allies, and partners. U.S. Central Command remains committed to aggressively pursuing these terrorists that threaten the region, our allies, and our citizens.”

Operation Inherent Resolve, as the coalition’s campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is called, is scheduled to end in September 2025. At that point, the U.S. and Iraq are expected to continue to have bilateral security arrangements, which have yet to be defined.

Around 2,500 U.S. troops are in Iraq as part of the campaign against the Islamic State group. U.S. officials say that number is likely to shrink under the new arrangement, though officials on both sides have declined to spell out the specifics, which could be influenced by events in neighboring Syria.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani is under domestic political pressure to shrink the U.S. presence, but Iraqi officials are also concerned about the possibility that ISIS may attempt a comeback.

Not all of the recent operations against the Islamic State group were in Iraq. On Jan. 2 and Jan. 3, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led group that is America’s partner in the country, conducted an anti-Islamic State operation “enabled by CENTCOM forces” in Deir Ez Zor in eastern Syria, the command said. That operation led to the capture of “ISIS attack cell leader,” the command added.

The U.S. has some 2,000 troops in Syria to work with the SDF against Islamic State forces and recently carried out airstrikes in areas of central Syria formerly controlled by the Assad regime and Russian forces.

The Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate was defeated in 2019, but the U.S. and its allies are attempting to prevent the group from regaining strength and carrying out attacks in the Middle East and potentially beyond.

“ISIS retains capabilities, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Syria, and that’s why we have our forces in both of those countries to ensure that ISIS can never reconstitute or resurge or surge back to what it was just a decade ago,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Jan. 3. “The entire mission of our force presence there is to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, and that’s why we’ve partnered with the Syrian Democratic Forces over the past few years and that’s why we continue to conduct strikes against ISIS positions, whether it be as recently as in the Badiya desert or elsewhere.”

An Army veteran who carried out a truck-ramming attack in New Orleans on New Year’s day declared his allegiance to the group. President Biden said that the veteran was “inspired” by ISIS. But U.S. officials have not presented any evidence that he was directed by ISIS or in contact with the group.