The Century Series

The Space Force is playing a key role in planning for “Golden Dome,” President Donald Trump’s initiative for comprehensive air and missile defense of the homeland, leaders said this week. But actually building and fielding the ambitious idea will require a major concerted effort across the Pentagon and intelligence community.

Lockheed Martin is offering a low-cost air vehicle it calls a flying "truck" that could be a cruise missile or sensor platform, intended to be the "low end" complement to the high-end JASSM/LRASM stealth cruise missiles, and help the Air Force achieve "affordable mass" in a future conflict..

The Air Force is extending PACER FORGE, an exercise meant to prepare trainees for Agile Combat Employment, where Airmen disperse in small teams to small air bases to complicate targeting for adversaries. 

How Airmen and Guardians prepare for and perform operations may be very different, but the Air Force and Space Force’s models for generating those forces aren’t all that dissimilar in their focus on readiness and teamwork, leaders said March 5 at the AFA Warfare Symposium. 

The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.

This week’s revelation that the Air Force had designated its first uncrewed fighters set the stage for the makers of the two aircraft to talk about the logistics of deploying them to dispersed locations.

Air Mobility Command is nearly done submitting its analysis of alternatives for the Next-Generation Air-Refueling System (NGAS), Gen. John D. Lamontagne said March 5 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

NATO is evolving its defense strategy and military posture, drawing on lessons learned from Ukraine's conflict. NATO and Ukraine launched the Joint Analysis Training and Education Centre (JATEC) in Poland to leverage real-time lessons from the ongoing conflict to inform defense planning.

The Space Force is establishing its first Guardian recruiters as the service seeks to take greater ownership of its force from day one, with aim of setting up a full squadron of around 30 Guardian recruiters later this year.