Space Force to Stand Up Guardian Recruiting Squadron with Mandate for New Mindset

March 5, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force is establishing its first Guardian recruiters as the service seeks to take greater ownership of its force from day one, military officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Currently, the Air Force Recruiting Service (ARFS) runs recruiting for the Space Force. However, AFRS and the Space Force are setting up a detachment at the agency’s headquarters at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland, Texas, with the aim of setting up a full squadron of around 30 Guardians later this year—a little less than one-third have gone through recruiting school.

“The Air Force has been a phenomenal partner with the Space Force in doing the recruiting for us. We didn’t have the infrastructure when we stood up,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna said in an interview at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“But all that to be said, we recognize that this is a service responsibility. This is a service obligation to attract and recruit our own, so as we were building capacity. … We have to start investing in recruiting. And we sent a couple of people down to the Recruiting Service to help facilitate the recruitment of Guardians in the Air Force ecosystem. But the big change was we were ready to start putting more skin in the game,” he said.

Previously, the Air Force recruiters who were focused on bringing in new Guardians were scattered around the country, noted Brig. Gen. Christopher R. Amrhein, the commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service. Now, the Space Force and AFRS want to set up a dedicated unit that would enable Guardians to speak to potential recruits directly.

“They were kind of scattered, and what we wanted to be able to do is have a consolidated squadron based out of San Antonio that is a direct report to the AFRS commander,” Amrhein said. “I wanted them to have literally the closest touch points, with marketing, with operations, with medical waivers, or our communications folks, because they’re building this, and so if they’re in an embedded around the headquarters, then those touch points are there.”

That headquarters approach will enable the Guardians at AFRS—currently under a detachment led by Lt. Col. Jason Cano, the Space Force Recruiting Branch Chief—to pursue recruiting more effectively.

“‘Do we have all the recruiting ingredients right? And what other opportunities are there?” Amrhein asked. “There was a potential that we were going to put Guardians embedded in squadrons, what we found is that we think we can build a better synergy” with a dedicated unit, Amrhein added.

Both Amrhein and Bentivegna praised current Guardian recruits as highly motivated and intelligent. But they said there is room for tweaks.

The Air Force is a massive organization, with an annual goal of 33,100 Active-Duty recruits and a total strength of nearly 700,000 Airmen across Active-Duty, the Air National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve, and with over 150 Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSC), the service term for career fields. The Space Force, meanwhile, has three enlisted career fields, five officer career fields, fewer than 10,000 uniformed Guardians, and is seeking to recruit 800 Guardians in 2025.

“We started to identify Guardians who were going to help build the recruitment strategy for the service,” Bentivegna said, adding that eight USSF recruiters have been identified so far. “They’ve actually gone to recruiting school with the Air Force, they went through that training, and they’re in the process. Several of them are already in Texas [at the AFRS headquarters] … Essentially, by the beginning of the summer, we’re hoping to have the initial cadre of trained Guardians that are down there, and then they’re going to start working through what is the recruiting strategy for the service.”

Bentivegna said he wanted Guardians to be like sports teams “scouting” prospects, a theme he has pushed given the Space Force’s role as a specialty service. He said even a professional sports team reached out about identifying talent.

“I use the terminology [of scouting], having these initial cadres of Guardians down there think about a process, a philosophy: how do we scout the right talent to come into the service and just take a different approach?” he said. “I use a different word because I want them to think about it differently. I’m afraid if I keep just using ‘recruiting,’ they’re just going to go right to here’s the checklist, here’s the playbook that the other services use, we’re just going to do that. But if I call it something different they’re going to think about it differently … start to think about what scouting in the Space Force looks like in the future, not just do the same as everyone else.”

Bentivegna said he wants Guardians to be keen observers of talent and not apply a preexisting model. That is necessary, he said, because of the unique skills the Space Force needs to attract.

“You think about the only three [enlisted] functional areas that we do in the Space Force: cyber operations, space operations, and intelligence—even from on the enlisted side, very complex, very, very challenging technical training,” he said. “Then operationally, what we’re asking these young men and women to do, even though they’re wearing [enlisted rank] stripes, is difficult. There’s some ability to learn to critically think that has to be applied to do that.”

Once a recruit enlists, Bentivegna sees possible changes as they undergo basic military training and tech school.

U.S. Space Force recruits stand for a group photo alongside 362nd Recruiting Command Squadron leadership after a total force enlistment ceremony at the Astronomy Association of Arizona Lunar Eclipse event May 15, 2022, in Buckeye, Ariz. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Matt Davis

“That transformation from civilian to Guardian should be transformative,” he said. “If we have an attrition rate, I’m OK with that. … We’re able to truly stress and assess the capability of someone to be a Guardian operationally. … These have to be meaningful and transformative processes that we have in the initial year of a Guardian’s life. And so it should be difficult. We should stress them, and I’m OK with it if we accept some risk on the front end as we’re working through this.”

One thing the Space Force already knows is that Guardians recruits are generally older than other services.

“The life experience, whether we’ve had individuals that own businesses, individuals married with children, have already had another kind of a career before coming over. We’re just attracting and recruiting a different group of individuals,” Bentivegna said. “If I have a 35-year-old who has a master’s degree, has a cyber business, and has a house they’re paying a mortgage on back home, do I really need to necessarily go through the room and check for dust in the locker now? … It teaches them discipline. But I think some of these individuals have already shown through life they have discipline. They know how to manage their time.”

That doesn’t mean relaxing standards, and may mean increasing them, he said.

“Because they’re more mature, I think maybe I could stress them a little bit more, because maybe they bring a little bit more to the table that allows me to put that training and expectation further to the left … and less of a burden on the operational side,” Bentivegna said.

Space Force Takes New Approach to Ground Control Systems

March 5, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force is modernizing its approach to ground control software, taking a more modular, agile, and iterative approach in a drive to overcome the bugs, holdups and delays that have plagued complex ground control systems in the past, leaders said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

More rapid, modular development for the software used to command and control missile warning and orbital warfare follows modern commercial best practice, but concerns remain over how fast USSF can change its approach and how well it can integrate disparate systems.

“Ground isn’t equally important to [space components]—I think it’s more important,” said Col. Robert Davis, program executive officer of SSC’s space sensing directorate. “I’ve been really trying to carry that message in my team: Ground’s often been an afterthought. A lot of the resources and attention has been put to the space segment, for good reason, but … we have to focus on the ground, at least as much, probably more.”

Former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition Frank Calvelli ranked focus on ground systems among his nine tenets for successful acquisition—spelling out that he wanted program managers to “Acquire ground and software intensive systems in smaller more manageable pieces that can be delivered faster.”

Delays have plagued programs like the OCX system for GPS satellites and the ATLAS program for command and control of space domain awareness assets. The Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) has also come under scrutiny; the program is for command and control of missile warning satellites like Next-Gen OPIR, in geosynchronous and polar orbits, and Resilient MW/MT, in medium-Earth orbit. The Government Accountability Office warned last year that FORGE must be mature by the end of fiscal 2026to meet the Next-Gen OPIR Polar launch schedule.

SSC announced March 3 it had awarded a $151 million contract to BAE Systems for prototype FORGE command and control software. It will join a framework system, which Davis described as the hardware and operating system to host the control software, and that has already been fielded at Buckley Space Force Base, Colo.

Davis told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium that other modules include a mission data processing application and relay ground stations. SSC’s modular approach treats FORGE as a “system of systems, program of programs,” he said, ensuring enhanced cybersecurity and resiliency for the ground ssytem.

Davis’ boss, SSC commander Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, was confident that FORGE will be ready to support new satellites when the time comes: “We are very happy with the results and what FORGE on the floor has shown at Buckley already with the initial instantiations,” he said. SSC is “very confident that it will be running on time to support the satellite constellation.”

More milestones are still to come. Davis said a version of the data processing application will be delivered this summer, followed by an interim version of the command-and-control software called NIO that the team is pursuing as “risk mitigation,” which will eventually flow into the final version being built by BAE. But even when that comes, Davis said, there will be more to do.

“We’re going to continue to deliver, not in a big-bang software way, but in more of an agile way,” Davis said. “The capability, depending on the sequencing, could be a couple times a year or could be once a year.”

Agile software development is standard practice in the commercial world, such as with phone apps, where updates are rolled out frequently; similarly, the Space Development Agency plans to update its fleet of low-Earth-orbit satellites every two years following a comparable model. And the Space Rapid Capabilities Office is also pursuing an iterative approach to a program called Rapid Resilient Command and Control, which will provide C2 software for orbital warfare.

ground command-and-control .

Kelly Hammett, head of the Space RCO, said he intends to “go to nontraditional small business software writers, who do this for a living, instead of, I’ll say, the traditional defense primes, who have struggled in many cases to provide ground software on a previously approved baseline.”

Like Davis, Hammett said his team broke down R2C2 into chunks—first an environment on Amazon Web Services’ cloud; next, a digital infrastructure using the Air Force’s Platform One cloud solution, and finally software applications providedΩ by 20 different vendors.

Like FORGE, R2C2 will be iterative. “We’re trying to show [the Space Force] what right looks like in terms of cloud-based and agile software development that delivers on a cadence,” Hammett said. “It’s not ‘wait five years till you get working software.’ You get something in 14 months, and then you get another version. We’ve delivered five [prototype] versions of software for R2C2, and are delivering version 1.0 in April … the operational version. We’ll be flying satellites off of that software.”

Now comes the really hard part, Hammett said: Getting multiple systems to work together. “The number one challenge, I really think, for the Space Force, is integrating the capabilities that we are developing into a coherent system of systems that can operate at the timing and tempo needed to fight a fight in space if we need to do that,” Hammett said.

“We’re building a bunch of stuff,” he continued. “We need to connect it appropriately, and that’s why we took on R2C2, but that’s just a piece. We’re doing the tactical C2 for orbital warfare. We’ve got [another program called Kronos] out of SSC doing operational C2 for that. And then we’ve got all the other mission areas.”

All that suggests that, as with the other ground challenges, integration will likely take not just time and persistence—but a gradual and iterative approach.

WATCH: Examining the State of Air Force Readiness

March 5, 2025 | By Tobias Naegele

AURORA, Colo.—Retired Air Force Col. John “JV” Venable, a former F-16 pilot and a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, visited with Air & Space Forces Magazine at the AFA Warfare Symposium to talk about the state of readiness across the Air Force, from spare parts to flying hours.

How Flying Test Bed Work Has Helped B-21 Make Good Progress

March 5, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—The first B-21 bomber is making good progress through its flight testing campaign and has required minimal software tweaks, building on extensive shakeouts of its systems carried out on a flying test bed, the president of Northrop Grumman’s aeronautics division said at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 5.

Tom Jones, speaking on a panel about next-generation aircraft, said he is “very pleased” with both the test results and the cadence of B-21 testing, saying the new bomber flies sorties at least twice a week at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The B-21 has been in testing for a little more than a year now, but the program is largely classified, and Jones’ remarks are the first update on the aircraft’s performance in months.

Given that it has been the first year of testing an aircraft with so many new technologies, Jones said, the B-21’s progress has been ahead of expectations and “we’re seeing a good margin” on performance. He also said there has only been one software change for the B-21 in its first year.

Jones chalked up those successes in large part to extensive ground testing and more than 1,000 flight hours on a flying test bed that evaluates the B-21’s internal systems like “hardware, software, navigation, communication suites.”

Combined, ground and flying test bed activities have helped account for “about a 50 percent reduction in the period of time it takes to certify software builds, which is pretty phenomenal,” he said. That achievement also stems from having a “commercially inspired software factory” for the B-21, he said. “Having a software development factory that captures that entire process and speeds up” the writing of code is paying dividends, Jones said.

The air and ground testbeds operate out of Northrop’s Melbourne, Fla., facilities, while the B-21 is assembled in Palmdale, Calif.

Jones also noted that the B-21 is being maintained by a combination of contractor and Air Force personnel and is confident Northrop will make good on its pledge to make the bomber a “daily flyer.”

The first B-21 test aircraft is heavily instrumented to capture test data, so engineers are getting “real time feedback” from each test, and the analysis of what was learned on each flight begins “while the aircraft is still in the air,” he said.

Jones demurred on a question of whether Northrop could speed up production of the B-21 or build more than planned. The program was structured to be a low-rate effort yielding only a handful of aircraft per year.

“Ultimately, it is up to the administration … to determine what the right number of bombers are,” he said. As the contractor, he said, “my responsibility to make sure that the Air Force has an option to help you make that decision.”

Providing those options means “we need to be performing on schedule. Check,” he said. Second, “we need to be performing on budget as well, and we need to be performing … in terms of our test program.” He said the B-21 is shaping up to be “most lethal weapon system in the world.”

Jones also said he believes the defense industrial base writ large is capable of scaling up production to the levels senior Air Force leaders have said are needed to credibly deter or fight a major war with a peer adversary. Northrop is recruiting from secondary schools and primary schools, to maintain its workforce and is having success, he said, turning people “with no skills” into valuable technicians in a few years.

WATCH: Space Superiority Take Center Stage at AFA Colorado

March 5, 2025 | By Tobias Naegele

AURORA, Colo.—Air & Space Forces Magazine sat down with Charles Galbreath, retired Space Force colonel and a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, at the AFA Warfare Symposium to talk about Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s message to Guardians and all things space happening at the conference.

How the US Can Speed Up Its Momentum in Electromagnetic Warfare

March 5, 2025 | By Amanda Miller

AURORA, Colo.—Defense industry executives who specialize in electromagnetic warfare, or EW, said March 4 that the widespread adoption of a set of universal standards has positioned the United States to advance quickly in the discipline.

Space Force Col. Nicole M. Petrucci, commander of Mission Delta 3, led a conversation with industry representatives at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

In light of “a renewed emphasis on competition and speed,” Petrucci asked the reps how the government or industry could “accelerate capabilities” for EW, an often-misunderstood area.

The practices that make up electromagnetic warfare involve the electromagnetic spectrum in one way or another, such as by interfering with communication signals, a.k.a. “jamming,” or sending fake communications, a.k.a. “spoofing.” Petrucci’s command includes the 4th Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron, whose transportable Counter Communications System, or CCS, “reversibly denies adversary satellite communications,” according to an official description.

Panel members had no shortage of suggestions for how to go faster: sticking to a set of universal standards; collaboration on contract requirements, incorporating more commercial products into weapon systems.

Amanda Whites, senior director of strategic captures at systems integration firm Parry Labs, credited the work of the Open Architecture Collaborative Working Group for creating the Universal Command and Control Interface, or UCI, a common set of standards. Interfaces are the situations in which components of a system meet, such as the jamming hardware built by one maker and software by another.

“I would say on both sides”—industry and government—“adhering to the standards, understanding the standards, and enforcing those is really what’s going to help you” speed up advancements, Whites said. “I think we’re at a point where we’ve stopped creating standards and started kind of just adhering to them. We’re noticing that our kill web is slowly starting to come together.”

The need for speed, Petrucci said, is being driven by findings like those in the 2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The one-year threat assessment published in March 2024 foresaw “accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications.”

Against that backdrop, Petrucci said, the Space Force wants to “get those [EW] systems … as quick as we can.”

Patrick Creighton, electronic warfare vice president and general manager at Harris Technologies, recommended getting away from “very unique bespoke requirements” when developing systems and instead enabling “more use of commercial off-the-shelf technologies,” while designing more systems to accommodate upgrades.

“We can’t be constantly relying on brand-new systems every five years,” Creighton said.

As one of the newly formed Mission Deltas, Petrucci’s command unites aspects of acquisitions, operations, intelligence, and cyber under one unit. Officials say they think the new organizational structure will speed up upgrades and strengthen outcomes.

James Conroy, Northrop Grumman’s navigation, targeting, and survivability vice president, said in his view, speed is “all about collaboration,” especially between the government and industry. “Collaboration results in efficiency, and efficiency is what results in speed.”

China’s Exercises Start to Look More Like Operations, USSF Pacific Leader Says

March 5, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

AURORA, Colo.—The head of Space Forces Indo-Pacific warned that China’s expanding military exercises, aided by an increased use of space, are blurring the line between drills and a potential invasion of Taiwan.

“It is clear in the increasing complexity with which the PLA exercises are done in a way, that it becomes very difficult, and will become very difficult, to discern an exercise from an invasion, and that’s clearly by design,” Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir, commander of Space Forces Indo-Pacific, told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “We have begun to see the space piece integrated into some of that, not as much early on, but more recently.”

In particular, Mastalir highlighted Beijing’s growing counter-space capabilities, particularly its anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons that can target satellites in low-Earth and geosynchronous orbits. China’s push to develop ASAT technologies—spanning kinetic and nonkinetic methods, from missiles to electronic jammers to robotic arms designed to disrupt satellites—has been a major concern for Space Force leaders.

Over the years, China has tested different ASAT weapons, including its first destructive test in 2007, a launch into GEO in 2013, and a fractional orbital bombardment system with a hypersonic glide vehicle in 2021. Former Rep. Jim Cooper has described the efforts as “perfecting kill shots.” The 2007 test, widely criticized as reckless, left debris into LEO, exacerbating the risk for all space operations. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has often pointed to that test as a turning point in the history of military space operations.

Mastalir warned that lately, China has been synchronizing the posturing of such weapons with its military exercises.

“For example, when you think about the counter-space weapons that China is building, including direct ascent ASATs … those are going out and being postured at the same time that the exercise is unfolding in the East China Sea,” said Mastalir. “We are starting to see more and more evidence—as they build the complexity, they’re bringing more of those forces in.”

Military leaders have raised alarms over China’s increasingly aggressive drills around Taiwan in recent years. Already in 2025, Beijing has sent multiple spy balloons and naval warships for “combat readiness patrols” around the island. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has also reported numerous incidents of Chinese military aircraft encircling the island. Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, called these recent actions “rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan with the mainland,” stressing that such People’s Liberation Army activities are “not exercises.”

These multi-domain drills have intensified as China has moved to integrate space capabilities into its military strategy. A decade ago, the Chinese only had about two dozen satellites. Now, they operate more than 1,000—most of which, according to Mastalir, are “specifically designed to track U.S. forces.”

“(China) has been building a space architecture specifically designed to keep the U.S. outside the Second Island Chain,” said Mastalir. Their strategic goal, he noted, is aimed at limiting U.S. and allied forces’ ability to intervene in key regional conflicts, particularly in the South China Sea and around countries like Taiwan and the Philippines.

China is also pushing to compete with Starlink in the satellite internet market, with a plan to build a “mega-constellation” of more than 600 satellites by 2025, eventually reaching a total of 14,000 satellites. Mastalir warned that the next phase of Beijing’s space ambitions will go beyond communication satellites toward remote sensing.

“It’s not surprising that China, too, is going to build these kinds of mega constellations—they’ve seen firsthand how effective it is in preserving communications in contested areas,” said Mastalir. “I fully expect, as we continue to see, not just communication constellations, but the proliferation of remote sensing capabilities.”

Researchers: US Bombs May One Day Use Chinese GPS Signals

March 4, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

AURORA, Colo.—One day, U.S. military personnel might target smart weapons using location data from Chinese or Russian versions of GPS, researchers from the Air Force and Space Force said at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4.

Such are the benefits of using multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems.

“If you think about dropping a bomb based on data from [China’s GNSS constellation] BeiDou, for instance, there’s an initial, and I think very healthy, gag reflex that we all probably have,” said Jeffrey Hebert, the senior scientist for positioning, navigation, and timing in the Sensors Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

But once you “muscle through that,” he said, you can weigh the pros and cons. Space-based PNT is critical to the ability of the joint force to wage war.

“We need to be able to prosecute navigation warfare better than adversaries. And multi-GNSS is one way that we can accomplish that,” explained Hebert.

Multi-GNSS means using signals like the European Union’s Galileo constellation and even China’s BeiDou, Hebert said. And it’s one of the pillars of the U.S. military’s efforts to make its PNT more resilient against high-end adversaries, who might be able to jam or otherwise interfere with the signal from GPS.

“To get to resiliency from the user perspective, we need to look at diversifying sources” of GNSS signals, he said.

Mockup of Beidou Navigation Satellite. Photo from AKAMGO yalms/Creative Commons

The key issue with multi-GNSS, Hebert said, is trust: How can you rely on a signal you don’t control? He said the answer is to take a page from the playbook of civil aviation.

“They’ve had to basically trust all of our lives, anyone who’s in the flying public, with GPS en route navigation, with being able to do a GPS approach to an airfield,” he said.

To have that level of trust in an unencrypted GPS signal, civil aviation authorities have had to augment it. That augmentation “involves monitoring, looking at the quality of those systems, and providing side channel information to the user that enhances their trust and the ability to use those [signals and systems] for safety critical” functions.

“What we’ve got to do is basically take some inspiration from that, but then map it to the use case of the military, which is a bit different,” Hebert concluded.

Currently, the Space Force is building and launching the next generation of GPS satellites, the so-called Block III and Block IIIF spacecraft. But in the meantime, explained David Voss, the director of spectrum warfare at the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, the service is taking advantage of new acquisition authorities and technologies to augment the fleet of 30 GPS satellites in medium-Earth orbit.

The service awarded four design contracts for Resilient-GPS, or R-GPS last year. The goal is to start with eight satellites, to be launched by 2028, four years after contract award. By way of comparison, the first Black IIIF satellite is scheduled to be launched in 2027, 11 years after its contract was awarded.

“What we want to do is take advantage of a lot of these new space technologies that are coming out. How do we take advantage of rapid tech insertion? How do we take advantage of the ability to multi-launch?” said Voss. Growing concern about attacks on GPS satellites meant a need for greater “orbital diversity,” he added. R-GPS, although also in MEO, will occupy very different orbital planes.

Introducing that orbital diversity, Voss said, is an example of “resilience by design.”

“There’s a lot of advantages to being able to provide that diversification,” said Voss, “It adds to performance. Additional numbers build performance. And that’s at the heart of resilience by design, is how can we build resiliency with performance into our capability?”

While the addition of R-GPS satellites won’t necessarily solve long-standing problems like jamming, it will create more capability, especially for civil users, added Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, head of Space Systems Command.

Air Superiority Is Still the Key to Winning. Achieving It Is Getting Harder

March 4, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—The concept of air superiority is changing to increasingly leverage autonomous aircraft, nonkinetic capabilities, and space, but it remains the operational prerequisite if the U.S. expects to prevail in any future conflict, regardless of the cost to achieve it, senior Air Force leaders said at AFA’s Warfare Symposium.

They also emphasized the importance of flying hours, day-to-day training, and exercises as critical elements in maintaining a force that can win control of the air, along with having sufficient munitions on hand to prosecute a no-notice war, and sufficient platforms to deliver those weapons.

“Fiscal constraints do not change what it takes to win,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of force design, integration and wargaming, in a panel discussion on air superiority. “We know what it takes to win. It takes air superiority, and if America wants to make those investments to win, then we’ll do so. If America doesn’t want to make those investments, then we’ll take more risk.”

Bottom line, he said: “I’m not so foolish to think that this is like a black and white decision … win versus loss. There’s a degree of risk involved. But “if we fund more force, we decrease operational risk, we decrease the risk of our policymakers”—and provide them with more options.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command, said air superiority allows the joint force to operate where and when it needs, making it a foundational enabler for operations in all domains. But air superiority should not be viewed in isolation from space superiority, he said. Regarding both, he said, “if you don’t have it, everything else is impossible.”

Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, uniformed deputy to the Air Force acquisition executive, said the defining lesson of the war in Ukraine is that fighting a war where neither side has air superiority “ends up in stalemate.”

China’s Focus

U.S. adversaries are developing their own means to achieve air superiority and to try to deny that advantage to U.S. forces. Referring to recent imagery released by China of its newest fighter aircraft, Wilsbach made clear their purpose: “Sixth-gen aircraft are for air superiority,” he said. “We know what that’s for. What are we going to do about it? I don’t believe nothing is an option.”

Kunkel said the Air Force force design he is developing has “designed to” that challenge, and asserted that the design will not be “driven by fiscal choices.” Still, fiscal reality is the biggest challenge to the Next-Generation Air Dominance family of systems, which includes both Collaborative Combat Aircraft and, at its heart, a crewed fighter. Panelists didn’t offer details on what that NGAD program promises, and acknowledged the “pause” imposed last summer when former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall chose to delay rather than commit to a very costly program.

To keep NGAD alive, contractors that have not been publicly identified were given Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction contracts late last year. Industry sources said the TMRR contracts enable the companies to keep their design teams together through the end of the year, leaving a relatively short window for the new Trump administration to decide whether to proceed with NGAD.

When the Air Force paused NGAD, Kunkel said, “we asked ourselves some hard questions: ‘What does air superiority look like in the future? Does the joint force need air superiority?’ And what we found is … air superiority matters.” Wargamers “tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” he said.

Still, White said the Air Force should be “open-minded about what [air superiority] looks like.” Wilsbach added that it could take a number of forms, including “nonkinetic” ways to dominate the skies. Electronic warfare and potentially cyber techniques can add to conventional kinetic attack. Kunkel said the Air Force can attack and disrupt adversary “surfaces” using nonkinetic means.

Still another element needed to enable air superiority is training. Capability is more than aircraft and weapons; it is also about the readiness and preparation of air crew. In the ramp up to Operation Desert Storm in 1990, pilots got 20 flying hours per month; today, deploying pilots can expect just 12—a number comparable to levels flown by Russia at the nadir of its military power in the late 1990s.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft will add to crewed pilots’ capability, but the Air Force will need a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft, and the time has not yet come where the U.S. can rely on unmanned jets alone.

“We obviously use quite a bit of unmanned platforms to do our business in the day to day,” Wilsbach said. “Very soon we’ll set up the unit at Creech to accept [CCAs] and start flying them. … We’re incorporating manned and unmanned teaming, and we believe that there’s some value to that as we go into the future.” But today’s artificial intelligence has not yet advanced “to the degree that the AI can replace a human brain,” Wilsbach said. “Someday, we will have that … but right now, we don’t. So it does require manned and unmanned teams as we go forward again in the future.”

White said that artificial intelligence writ broadly will help accelerate getting air superiority, as it gives “optionality” for decision-makers pressed to make quick calls. But its potential value is also seen by adversaries.

“We pride ourselves … with being the smartest in the world,” he said, but “the reality is, the threat has changed, because our adversaries are doing very similar things. We can’t just sit back and watch.”