Gen. CQ Brown took command of the Air Force in August 2020 with a mission: to reshape a service that had spent nearly two decades in uncontested counterinsurgency fights in the Middle East. Now, Brown said, the Air Force needed to get ready for a future war against a major potential adversary such as China and wouldn’t be able to count on the same military dominance as in the last war.
Dig into the latest news on how the Air Force and Space Force are training their warfighters to complete the missions at hand.
The U.S. Air Force is exploring a novel concept for increasing the likelihood of scoring a hit in air-to-air combat. The idea is to use an air-to-air missile with a nose that bends to get at the target before it can get away. The service views this as one path to giving current and future combat aircraft, including a sixth-generation stealth jet being developed under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, a new way to engage increasingly maneuverable threats.
As he executes on his at times “daunting” responsibilities to steer the United States’ newest high-tech military branch, Space Force leader Gen. Chance Saltzman is applying lessons and tactics from innovative leaders who served decades before this modern, digital age. He personally writes and regularly sends Chief of Space Operations notices to Guardians at all levels, for example, to share his evolving thoughts on priorities and invite discussion and debate on topics he views as critically important to the young force.
The Department of the Air Force thinks it’s made significant progress over the last several years in upping its game in the still-nascent field of weapons system cybersecurity—enough so that it’s ready to start expanding the approach it’s been using to the Space Force. The Air Force first stood up its Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapons Systems (CROWS) in 2017, responding to then-increasing realizations that weapons platforms are vulnerable to cyber threats, but require different security approaches than traditional IT systems.
The Pentagon is asking Congress to significantly increase funding for the U.S. military’s presence in the Pacific, signaling the Biden administration’s increasing sense of urgency toward countering China’s aggressive behavior in the region. Alongside President Joe Biden’s budget request for next year, the Pentagon will submit a new $15.3 billion plan to fund Pacific forces, according to an unclassified version of the report obtained by POLITICO.
A type of contract pioneered in the 1950s may help the Pentagon solve a 21st-century problem: making sure private-sector satellite operators don’t cut off wartime communications. On March 9, lawmakers and the commander of U.S. Space Command expressed concern about SpaceX’s recent announcement that it would start limiting Ukraine’s use of the company’s Starlink constellation.
The U.S. must “regenerate” its electronic warfare capabilities after years of neglect to ensure dominance on battlefields of the future, John Sherman, the Pentagon’s chief information officer, told a congressional panel. “As we get ready for China, we better be able to fight and dominate” the electromagnetic spectrum, he told the House Armed Services Cyber, Information Technology and Innovation subcommittee at a March 9 hearing on defense in the digital era.
A top Defense Department health official said March 7 that a law limiting the DOD’s ability to ask questions about firearms ownership by service members hinders the physician-patient relationship and should be amended. Questioned during a hearing by a Senate Appropriations defense panel on a 2013 law that prohibits DOD leaders, including commanders and health providers, from inquiring about or recording any information on private firearms owned by troops, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. Lester Martinez-Lopez said the law, in terms of health care, is “not good for any of the two parties.”
Throughout history, women have played critical roles in the success of the U.S. military in both war and peace times. Margaret Corbin famously defended Fort Washington in 1776 during the Revolutionary War and Cathay Williams disguised herself as a man to serve in the Civil War, but it wasn’t until 1901 that women were allowed to serve in the military in any official capacity. These female trailblazers are to thank for the roles women have in our armed forces today. But who are they? And how did they do it?