Space Force Clears ULA’s New Rocket to Compete with SpaceX

March 26, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force certified United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket to carry its most important national security missions into space—clearing the way for a series of new launch missions this year and giving SpaceX a little competition.

Space Systems Command announced the decision March 26, clearing the rocket for the National Security Space Launch program, which represents space missions that can tolerate the lowest possible risk.

ULA endured a comprehensive certification process for Vulcan Centaur, SSC said in a release, covering “52 certification criteria, including more than 180 discrete tasks, 2 certification flight demonstrations, 60 payload interface requirement verifications, 18 subsystem design and test reviews, and 114 hardware and software audits.”

Vulcan Centaur replaces ULA’s Delta IV rocket, which had been certified for NSSL missions, but completed its final launch in April 2024. Since then, SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have been the only option for NSSL missions, making SpaceX a dominant force in the launch market.

“We definitely want to make sure that the industrial base is as broad as possible,” declared Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman at this month’s AFA Warfare Symposium. “That gives us more assurances that we will have ready access to the kinds of capabilities we need across all of the different orbital regimes and weight classes that we have to put capabilities in space.”

The Space Force had assigned more than a dozen missions to ULA which could not be flown until Vulcan was certified. Among them: small satellites for the Space Development Agency, new GPS satellites, classified payloads for the Space Force and National Reconnaissance Office, and experimental payloads for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. One launch was redirected to SpaceX during this time.

Space Systems Command said Vulcan’s first NSSL launch will be this summer, likely to include some of the 100 satellite launches the Space Force hopes to deploy in 2025.

In a statement, ULA president Tory Bruno thanked his government customers for their partnership. “Thank you to all our customer partners who have worked hand-in-hand with us throughout this comprehensive certification process,” he said. “We are grateful for the collaboration and excited to reach this critical milestone in Vulcan development.”

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for assured access to space, said completing the certification locked in “a critical element of national security,” promising that “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems.”

More competition could be coming soon. Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket for the first time last year and is gearing up for another launch in the next few months, in the hopes of also earning NSSL certification. Blue Origin has already been accepted into NSSL’s new “Lane 1” program, which is for commercial-like missions where risk tolerance is greater.

More new launch providers are also trying to get Space Force approval.

“It was only about 10 years ago when we had like one provider and just a few rocket systems,” Saltzman said earlier this month. “So if you take a long look at this, over the last 10 or 15 years, we’ve really expanded the industrial base in support of launch services. I think we’re on the right trajectory.”

Air Force Picked Boeing for NGAD Based on ‘Best Overall Value.’ Here’s What It Means

March 26, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force made the final choice of Boeing over Lockheed Martin in the Next-Generation Air Dominance competition, and it was based on “best overall value,” a service spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The winners of some previous competitions for major programs have been decided by higher-level Pentagon officials, such as the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. But the spokesperson said the Air Force’s acting senior acquisition executive, Darlene J. Costello, approved the NGAD pick, made by an unnamed leader of the evaluation team. There had been speculation that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or even President Donald Trump would personally select the NGAD winner.

“The Milestone Decision Authority for the NGAD program is the Air Force Senior Acquisition Executive [Costello], who made the decision to proceed with Milestone B,” the spokesperson said. “As a matter of course, we do not reveal the identity of the source selection authority (SSA) in order to protect the integrity of the source selection process. This allows the SSA to operate free of any influence by outside parties and to provide an unbiased decision on the evaluation of the offerors solely based on the criteria set forth in the solicitation.”

Boeing’s proposal, now called the F-47, won because it “represents the best overall value to the government and is best suited to fulfill the Air Force’s requirements,” the spokesperson said. That stands in contrast to other contracts that have been awarded based on “lowest price/technically acceptable,” which is the criteria used when proposals are so evenly matched that cost becomes the key discriminator. A “best overall value” offeror may sometimes have quoted a higher price and was chosen because the source selection authority deemed the proposal more realistic, or if more value was added in the form of far better technical performance, lower-cost maintainability, or other factors.

The Air Force has not revealed the criteria used to judge the two entrants, and the spokesperson said the service “will not release additional details relative to the proposal.”

Industry sources told Air & Space Forces Magazine that past performance was not heavily weighted in the selection and counted for less than 10 percent of the scoring.

Boeing has struggled on current Air Force programs for the KC-46 tanker, T-7 trainer, and Air Force One presidential transport, incurring years of delays and about $10 billion of losses. Lockheed has had issues with delayed F-35 deliveries and stubbornly high operating costs.

Former government officials said Lockheed’s issues were a negative, but perhaps not as much as Boeing’s well-publicized management struggles.

The Air Force said it awarded Boeing a “cost-plus incentive fee contract” for NGAD engineering and manufacturing development, but the contract’s value and details are being withheld due to classification. The Air Force said the EMD contract includes “maturing and testing all aspects of the F-47,” and that this phase “will produce a small number of test aircraft for evaluation.” It also includes “competitively priced options for low-rate initial production.”

Boeing had previously won Air Force contracts with fixed-price offerings, only to eat major losses down the line. As a result, corporate leaders have said they will not bid for fixed-price contracts when it pertains to developing new technology.

Under cost-plus agreements, the government will typically cover overages resulting from maturing new technologies, but Boeing will be able to win additional funds if it meets or beats schedule, technical or cost requirements.

Protest?

Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed Martin would divulge when that company will receive a debrief as to why it was not selected for the contract. Once that happens, though, Lockheed may file a protest if it feels the Air Force did not judge the proposals fairly or gave inordinate weight to certain factors. If it files a protest, the Government Accountability Office has 100 days in which to resolve the issues and decide whether the selection was made fairly.

“We expect the GAO to take the amount of time needed to thoroughly evaluate the record and provide an assessment,” the Air Force spokesperson said.

Major aircraft program awards are frequently protested, because the relatively low cost of a protest could result in billions of dollars in recovered work. Boeing and Lockheed, which teamed up in the 2015 Long-Range Strike Bomber competition, protested Northrop Grumman’s selection, but the GAO upheld that award and Northrop went on to develop the B-21.

However, Boeing succeeded in protesting the award of the KC-X tanker to a team of Northrop and Airbus in 2008, arguing the Air Force didn’t follow its own rules in assessing the entrants. The award was thrown out, the competition was re-run, and in 2011, Boeing won and is now building the KC-46.

When former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall held off choosing an NGAD winner late in 2024—handing off the choice to the new administration—the Air Force awarded both Boeing and Lockheed technology maturation and risk reduction contracts of an undisclosed amount to keep their design teams together until the program’s future was resolved, or at least until the end of fiscal 2025. The Air Force declined to provide any details about the value of those contracts or what their deliverables might be.

“Contract timelines, costs, and capability deliveries are protected by enhanced security measures,” the service spokesperson said. “No further details are available.”

Engine

The Air Force said the competition for an engine that will power the NGAD fighter is a separate contest unaffected by the selection of Boeing.

The Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) engine for the sixth-gen fighter “is platform agnostic,” the Air Force said, “and designs can be tailored to an extent for future fighter and other aircraft operating across various mission threads.” It did not specify what other platforms might be able to use the NGAP engine, but the only new designs on the horizon are the Next-Generation Aerial refueling System (NGAS) and later iterations of the autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

General Electric, with the XA-102, and RTX’s Pratt & Whitney, with the XA-103, are the competitors for the NGAP program. They both recently received contracts to build and test prototypes.

Designation

The Air Force declined to provide the designations or nomenclature for the X-planes it revealed that Boeing and Lockheed flew in the technology demonstration phase of the NGAD program, saying they remain classified.

However, while Boeing’s aircraft is now called the F-47, its X-plane predecessor wasn’t the X-47 or Y-47—the service said Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin himself chose the designation.

The Air Force has a policy governing the designation and naming of aircraft and weapons, with new systems generally going in numerical order. The policy does, however, grant leaders discretion to skip design numbers.

The F-35 was an out-of-sequence selection. Had the Air Force decided to keep going in order from there, the NGAD fighter would have been the F-36 or F-37. Had the service decided to go back to its original sequence, it wold have been F-24 or F-25, following the Lockheed YF-22 and Northrop YF-23 which competed in the Advanced Tactical Fighter Competition.

The B-21 bomber likewise was supposed to carry the nomenclature B-3, but former Air Force Secretary Deborah James opted to name it the B-21 to emphasize that it is a “21st century bomber.”

The spokesperson said Allvin chose F-47 “in consultation with the Secretary of Defense” and the nomenclature “carries multiple significant meanings. It honors the legacy of the P-47, whose contributions to air superiority during World War II remain historic.” It also “pays tribute to the founding year of the Air Force” and recognizes Trump and “the 47th President’s pivotal support for development of the world’s first sixth-generation fighter.” Honorifics have usually been applied to the nickname for an aircraft, not its nomenclature.

End of an Era: Last F-16 for Training US Pilots Leaves Luke

March 26, 2025 | By David Roza

After 42 years and more than 20,000 pilots, the last U.S. Air Force F-16 at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., took off March 24 en route to its new home with the 16th Weapons Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

There are still F-16s at Luke: the Republic of Singapore Air Force owns several for training RSAF pilots and maintainers with Luke’s 425th Fighter Squadron, and Top Aces, the private “red air” contractor that acts as adversaries in training, also owns several F-16s at Luke. But the departure this week marks the end of an era for the base.

Luke has trained fighter pilots since it began in 1941, starting with propeller planes such as the P-40, P-38, and P-51, then on to jets including the F-84, F-100, F-4, and F-15 before training its first F-16 pilots in 1983. By 2005, the Luke-based 56th Fighter Wing was the world’s largest fighter unit, with eight squadrons flying 189 F-16s.

Luke, in the words of author Peter Aleshire in his 2004 book Eye of the Viper: The Making of an F-16 Pilot, was where “drooly, diapered, dumbass, would-be fighter pilots get stripped down, disassembled, spun, bounced, and stress-tested—before being reassembled into Viper pilots—slit-eyed, ice-cold killers.”

luke f-16 — Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Ress, 309th Fighter Squadron commander, fastens his oxygen mask to his helmet in the cabin of a U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon for the final F-16 flight of the 309th FS, Feb. 26, 2025, at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Katelynn Jackson)

It takes a high-performing student to pass through undergraduate pilot training and introduction to fighter fundamentals before learning to fly the F-16. But the pace and intensity of the 37-week long F-16 Basic Course (also called B-Course) pushes even the most high-achieving students.

“F-16 students begin their journey into F-16 being inundated with a crushing load of classroom academics that doesn’t abate through the duration of the 7-month course,” Air Education and Training Command wrote on its website.

The F-16’s departure from the base started in 2014, with the arrival of the first F-35. Now there are five F-35 training squadrons at Luke, soon to be six as the 309th Fighter Squadron switches to the fifth-generation aircraft.

Lt. Col. Michael Ress, commander of the 309th, flew the squadron’s last Viper to Nellis. The final class of F-16 student pilots graduated from the squadron in September, with the last local training sortie in February.

“The F-16 has been the backbone of the Air Force for over 50 years,” Ress said in a press release. “Fourth-generation aircraft like the F-16 will continue to be the capacity, while fifth-generation aircraft like the F-35 is now the capability.”

The F-16 training mission continues at Morris Air National Guard Base, Ariz.; Holloman Air Force Base, N.M.; and Kelly Field Annex of Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. Luke’s 425th Fighter Squadron will move to Ebbing Air National Guard Base, Ark., in the next few years.

“While the F-16’s chapter at Luke AFB comes to a close, our mission remains unchanged,” the 56th Fighter Wing wrote in the press release. “Luke will continue to train the world’s greatest fighter pilots and combat-ready Airmen, now with the unmatched capabilities of the F-35.”

‘Time is Now’ to Look at New Airlifter: TRANSCOM Boss

March 26, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The head of the U.S. Transportation doesn’t want to wait to start planning on a new airlifter to replace both the C-5 and C-17 fleets, which serve as the command’s “workhorses.”

“The issue with the C-17 is, while it performs well, a lot of folks think that it’s new, and it’s not a new plane, and so we will continue to use it and stress it,” Air Force Gen. Randall Reed said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on March 25. “And, because it takes such a long time to build the next plane, the time is now to start looking at the next one.”

The C-5, the Air Force’s biggest aircraft, can carry up to 285,000 pounds, while the C-17 can haul 170,000 pounds and is more capable of operating from smaller, austere runways ideal for contested environments. TRANSCOM relies heavily on these aircraft to move oversized cargo, personnel, and supplies worldwide, supporting everything from combat to humanitarian operations. Reed noted they “require investment” to ensure sustainability.

Both fleets face challenges; the Air Force tapped Pratt & Whitney for a $5.5 billion contract for engine sustainment and support in 2023, aiming for better fuel efficiency and longer maintenance intervals by 2027. The C-5 fleet underwent a $10 billion upgrade in 2018, including engine and avionics improvements, with the goal of driving its mission capable rate above 55 percent. However, despite initial success, the fleet’s readiness has since declined.

Air Force officials have spoken about a Next-Generation Airlift platform, or NGAL, but it is not an official program in the service budget and work on it remains preliminary at this point.

Gen. John D. Lamontagne, Air Mobility Command chief, recently speculated that a potential NGAL platform must be stealthy and capable of performing more missions than just transporting people and cargo. AMC is currently conducting a capabilities-based assessment focused on cargo capacity, range, survivability, and connectivity.

“We want to figure out what those next requirements look like before we fly the wings off the C-17,” Lamontagne said at AFA Warfare Symposium earlier this month. “There’s a healthy amount of life left in the C-17, but we want to stay in front of that.”

Tankers

Reed also highlighted the need to recapitalize the Air Force tanker fleet—a concern he raised with senators at a hearing earlier this month.

“The concerns that I have is that we continue to [re-capitalize] that fleet without a break,” said Reed. “The KC-135s that we have are aging, and as they continue to age, it’s harder to find the parts. Once we actually find the parts, and we begin to fix the airplanes, it takes longer, so the faster that we can continue to replace those planes is key.”

Air Force Gen. Randall Reed, U.S. Transportation Command Chief, testifies at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on March. 25. Screenshot.

The Air Force plans to buy 183 KC-46 Pegasus aircraft to replace about half of the current KC-135 fleet. But the average age of the remaining Stratotankers will be 67 by the time the Air Force accepts the last KC-46. Lamontagne has suggested a service life extension program may be necessary.

The KC-46, meanwhile, “does have some challenges,” Reed said—an acknowledgement of its glaring deficiencies that have slowed progress and performance.

Deliveries of the KC-46 are suspended while Boeing investigates cracks in the outboard wing trailing edge. So far, 11 of 50 inspected KC-46s have shown cracks, with 39 more to be inspected in the next two weeks. Repairs are expected to proceed swiftly once the cause is determined.

However the timeline for resuming deliveries remains unclear, as most of the other, more chronic deficiencies with the KC-46 are still being worked on, according to Lamontagne.

Air Force Sets Locations, Seeks Volunteers for First ‘Deployable Combat Wings’

March 25, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Editor’s Note: This story was updated March 26 with additional details.

As the Air Force begins setting up its first five Deployable Combat Wings, it is seeking volunteers to join these foundational units, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin announced in an email to Active-Duty Airmen on March 25.

Allvin said assignment opportunities for certain career fields within the five new wings are posted to the Air Force’s internal “talent marketplace,” and that officers have until April 2 to apply. Enlisted members will be able to volunteer from April 4 to May 14.

An Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the service is looking for around 700 volunteers across the five locations, with different totals depending on the base. If there are not enough volunteers, Airmen will need to be nonvoluntarily assigned to the units.

The five wings, which will begin a workup cycle and deploy about 18 months after forming, are set to be located at:

Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark.

Moody Air Force Base, Ga.

Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho

Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.

Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.

Those locations still have to go through the Air Force’s strategic basing process.

Most of those bases host fighter units, though Little Rock is primarily an airlift hub. Seymour Johnson is the only one that currently hosts an Air Task Force, the most recent precursor to Deployable Combat Wings.

Allvin and Air Force leaders plan to have 24 Deployable Combat Wings across the force, including Active, Guard, and Reserve units, which will all train and deploy together from their home installation—a radical change from the service’s current piecemeal approach to deployments.

DCWs were introduced conceptually a year ago as part of the Department of the Air Force’s “Re-Optimization for Great Power Competition” initiative, but planning was far enough along that the change was not subject to the pause imposed last month by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who wanted those initiatives to be reviewed by the administration’s new Secretary of the Air Force.

Allvin said the first five “unit type codes” for Deployable Combat Wings were approved before the pause was put in place. UTCs are codes that define the capabilities of Air Force units.

By volunteering, Airmen will be funded to move to their new bases, Allvin wrote. Volunteers and those assigned to the units will go through the full force generation cycle together—participating in training, exercises, and deployments as one unit.

“This is your chance to shape the future of airpower and warfighting,” Allvin wrote. “We need Airmen who are ready to embrace this challenge, strengthen our warrior ethos, and build the next generation of Air Force deployments.”

The journey to creating DCWs has been a long one. Since the Global War on Terror era began, Airmen have deployed as individuals or in small groups to large central bases in the Middle East, where most met their team and learned to work together on the fly. In recent years, the service has introduced interim solutions, first Expeditionary Air Bases, and more recently Air Task Forces—units that pull Airmen from fewer bases and units, and that work to train at least sometimes together before deployments begin.

Deployable Combat Wings are the final step in that transformation.

The last of six Air Task Forces stood up in October 2024, and one deployed for an exercise in Korea this month. By the time the six ATFs finish their force generation cycle in the fall of 2026—the start of fiscal 2027—leaders want to have the first Deployable Combat Wings ready to deploy.

Second Batch of Air Force Warrant Officers Graduate in Alabama

March 25, 2025 | By David Roza

The Air Force doubled its number of warrant officers when a second cohort graduated Warrant Officer Training School on March 13 at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

The 30 new graduates complement the first 30 who graduated on Dec. 6, which marked the Air Force’s first new warrant officers in 66 years. The service decided to bring back the ranks in early 2024 in a bid to retain technical talent in two fast-moving career fields: cybersecurity and information technology.

The Air Force’s career paths for enlisted and commissioned Airmen are geared to put them in leadership roles, but the warrant officer role allows Airmen to stay hands-on throughout their careers. That kind of long-running expertise will be crucial in a future conflict, the head of Air Education and Training Command, Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, said at the March 13 graduation.

“We are at the tip of the spear largely because the cyber, information, and air domains largely make up the difference in time it takes to cover the geography with our competitors,” Robinson said, according to a press release. “If you miss a critical factor in a string of code, that is the difference in success or failure of the mission. You’re going to bring that attention to detail to the table.”

Candidates arrive for day one of Warrant Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, Jan. 14, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Damien Thomas)

All of the candidates brought technical chops to Alabama with them: they are all noncommissioned officers and senior noncommissioned officers and had to beat out 412 other applicants for their spots. Over the course of eight weeks, the selectees learned to serve as critical links between warfighters and their leaders on technical issues.

“When the dust settles, the commander looks back at that warrant officer and is like ‘OK so what do you think?’” a member of the first cohort, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Tajh Smith, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in December. “Or the warrant officer will bring everybody back to a level playing field and put things in perspective.”

“We receive candidates who already possess the technical credibility,” said WOTS Commandant Maj. Nathan Roesler in the release. “Our goal is to ensure the men and women that leave here are ready to weaponize that credibility paired with leadership, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills that will enhance their ability to be effective in the agile environment we are in today.”

Among the 30 new warrant officers who graduated on March 13, 23 were Active-duty, six in the Air National Guard, and one in the Air Force Reserves.

A third cohort of 18 warrant officer candidates started the course March 21. Class 25-03 completes the initial 78 selectees accepted last August, up from 60 selectees as originally planned. The Air Force increased the pool after seeing the high quality of the applicants.

About 60 more warrant officers are expected to graduate through the rest of fiscal year 2025 and into the start of fiscal year 2026. Due to the nature of board scheduling last year, two classes graduating in June and later this fall will each feature 30 Air National Guardsmen.

The total number of graduates at that point will be about 120 warrant officers, Roesler told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The school is scheduled to graduate about 150 more split over four or five classes in fiscal 2026. The selection boards for those classes opened March 3, with selections to be made this summer.

About half of that 150 will be Active-Duty, while the other half will be predominately Air National Guard, with a few Air Force Reservists mixed in too, but the individual classes will likely be more of a total force mix, Roesler said. Cyber and IT will still be the only two career fields.

“We’ve been really impressed by the quality of candidate that we’ve received so far,” the major said. “I’m really proud of the training school and we continue to improve with every class. I think the Air Force is going to be pleased with the assets that they’re gaining in these new warrant officers.”

NATO to Focus on ‘Realistic Combat Scenarios’ in Ramstein Flag 2025

March 24, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

NATO will start a major exercise at the end of the month to practice the ability of allied air forces to operate in a contested environment, alliance officials said March 24.

The Netherlands will host the exercise, Ramstein Flag 2025. Over 90 aircraft will operate from 12 allied bases, with the Dutch Leeuwarden Air Base acting as the hub under the direction of NATO and its Allied Air Command.

“Participation from over 15 NATO allied countries allows us to conduct a number of high-end missions within realistic combat scenarios,” U.K. Royal Air Force Air Marshal Johnny Stringer, the deputy commander of NATO Allied Air Command, told reporters. “Our priorities for the exercise this year include exercising what we call counter-anti access/area denial missions, integrated air and missile defense, and also practicing agile combat employment—all underpinned by rapid and seamless sharing of information across nations and across those operating bases.”

A major purpose of the exercise, which will take place from March 31 to April 11, will be to practice interoperability during the sprawling exercise in which NATO fighters and support planes will operate with special forces and naval units.

“From a NATO perspective, it fits into a sequence of analysis, lessons, and then applying that in a sense of tactical development that benefits all of the nations in NATO and it marks a bit of a step change from where we were only a few years ago,” Stringer said.

In keeping with NATO’s efforts to contend with a potential Russian adversary equipped with long-range missiles and electronic warfare capabilities, one focus of the exercise will be on distributed operations.

“We train to the counter-A2AD mission set and integrated air and missile defense. The focus of the exercise is on being interoperable with all the participants flying different aircraft, but being able to fight as one force,” said Lt. Gen. André Steur, commander of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. “We’ll be operating from different bases where we have the flexibility with the air armada to operate from different airfields with different platforms, but once airborne, we are one fighting team.”

Stringer said the disparate locations would “deliberately stress” the participants.

“We sometimes underestimate that value of actually knowing the folks you’re going to possibly go to war with,” Steur added.

The exercise comes as the U.S. has voiced skepticism about NATO under President Donald Trump, with questions about the future U.S. role. As of yet, that has not seemed to impact military exercises, as U.S. Air Forces in Europe just wrapped up a Bomber Task Force deployment of B-52 Stratofortress that included more than a dozen practice missions with NATO allies. Stringer said the U.S. Air Force planned to participate with a “high-end suite of air capability.”

“All relationships, all alliances probably have their ups and downs. But what you’re seeing in Ramstein Flag is some of the highest-end training we’re able to conduct in Europe across a raft of nations, supported by all 32 nations in the alliance, to generate the essential skills that we’ll need—all of us will need—to keep Europe safe. And that ability to integrate, to be interoperable across nations, is essential to it. And that is underpinning the exercise,” Stringer said.

NATO’s first ever Ramstein Flag took place last October in Greece, with more than 130 aircraft from 12 countries. The concept borrows from the U.S. Air Force’s Red Flag exercises, which aim to “train as you fight,” using large-scale, realistic environments and adversaries to help hone Airmen’s aerial combat skills.

How to Prioritize DOD’s Budget: Experts Try It—and So Can You

March 24, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s instruction for the Pentagon to find 8 percent in budget cuts that could be reallocated to other priorities has challenged the services and left onlookers wondering what will be cut to meet the mandate.

When defense analysts and experts gathered last week to talk about their experience seeking those cuts in a recent think tank workshop, they came out concluding the Navy will benefit most from the shift, followed by the Space Force, but the Army will be slashed and the Air Force could suffer a smaller loss.

The American Enterprise Institute led the workshop, in which eight teams or individuals representing four different think tanks were allowed to tinker with the budget while trying to comply with Hegseth’s budget “relook” instructions and exemptions. Once funds were cut, participants could decided where they wanted to reinvest the savings. The caveats: Funds could not be restored to anything already trimmed, and the total of all moves had to be cost-neutral.

Anyone can try their own hand at reapportioning defense spending using AEI’s new Defense Futures Simulator, an AI-powered software system that allows users to go program by program in the budget and make adjustments.

What the think tankers chose could, of course, be far different from what Defense Department leaders decide, but because the analysts faced the same limitations—they could not cut from 17 categories exempted by Hegseth—and because they knew his stated priorities, their choices offer insight into what could be coming in the administration’s 2026 budget request.

“We had to make some assumptions here … for this particular administration,” said Melissa Dalton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was undersecretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration. “What we have is Secretary Hegseth’s message to the force that emphasizes lethality; homeland defense on the ground, in the sky; the need to work with allies and partners to deter [Chinese] aggression in the Indo-Pacific and to end wars responsibly and reorient to key threats. So I tried to use that as a north star to guide where I went in terms of some of the choices. They were really tough to make.”

Participants said the cuts were challenging because they had to balance tradeoffs in force structure, readiness, and modernization.

All eight teams wound up cutting the overall budget for the Army and adding to the budget of the Navy. Dalton was the only one to add to the Air Force budget, though most other teams’ cuts were relatively modest. Dalton was also the most aggressive in adding to the Space Force budget, while others were more mixed.

Several participants focused cuts on non-mission essential accounts, such as commissaries, schools, and medical research. Most added to missiles and munitions accounts for all the services.

Todd Harrison of AEI, who helped lead the workshop, said the 17 exempted categories listed by Hegseth favored the Navy, because the exemptions included high-dollar programs like submarines and surface ships.

“Frankly, it was a bit of a box that I think we were all trying to navigate … in terms of how much of the Navy was protected,” Dalton said. “It kind of forced us to look to the Army as the next big bill-payer.”

Multiple participants said they would have made cuts to the Navy’s surface ships had they been allowed, because most of those ships would not be survivable in a potential conflict with China.

“The large surface combatants was definitely our number one [pick to cut from the exemption list],” said Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities. “We kept trying to cut them, and Todd kept sending us back and saying, ‘You can’t cut that.’”

For similar reasons, some participants wanted to cut Air Force aircraft.

Dalton noted “legacy platforms,” such as fourth-generation fighter jets and older intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft were on her list; Elaine McCusker of AEI said she “really wanted to cut the old bombers, because I really feel like the Air Force needs to have the money to go towards the new aircraft and the modernization and unmanned systems.”

Air Force bombers were not explicitly exempted, but Hegseth did prohibit cuts to core readiness and nuclear modernization. The Air Force is upgrading its oldest B-52 bombers to keep flying for decades to come, and the small size of service’s bomber fleet would make any cuts a question of mission readiness. The B-52 and B-2 bombers are the only nuclear-capable bombers in the force.

Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said he viewed the dearth of airfields within the Pacific’s first island chain as a reason for cutting the Air Force in some areas.

“I’m willing to cut back on Air Force fighters and short-range attack in order to have money for longer range strike systems, both Air Force and Navy,” he said.

The exercise preceded the unveiling of the F-47, the Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, which President Trump, Hegseth and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin introduced at the White House on March 21. Harrison noted that the eight teams were mixed in their approaches to NGAD, with some seeking to cancel the program and others delaying or accelerating its development.

The Space Force, the smallest and least well-known of the military branches, saw mixed results. Dalton proposed a big increase, while at least one team sought a cut. Dalton said her proposed increase was recognition of “the role that the Space Force is playing and the demand signal that the joint force is sending the Space Force.”

“When you look at the analysis and the threat environment, particularly in confronting the PRC,” Dalton added, “when you think about countering long-range kill chains; when you think about closing long-range kill chains for the United States and its allies, the Space Force functions as those key nodes across the kill chains that can enable the Air Force, the Navy, the entire joint force, to be able to operate in a contested environment. And so the move to space is necessary in order to be able to be survivable and resilient.”

Both Air Force and Space Force leaders have made the case in recent months that their services need more resources to accomplish its core missions of air and space superiority. Hegseth has endorsed those missions, and the Trump administration has made air and missile defense—which will involve both air and space assets—a top priority.

How DOD Could Recoup Its Investment in Ukraine’s Long-Range Drones

March 24, 2025 | By Matthew Cox

For three years now, the U.S. has dug into its weapons arsenal and shared billions of dollars to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia; now, as peace talks suggest the war could be coming to an end, America could reap a dividend in the form of Ukraine’s battle-tested drone technology.

Ukraine has developed a talent for transforming low-cost, commercially available drones into long-range weapons, which have proven more capable than many more expensive U.S. unmanned aerial systems, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, who visited Ukraine late last year.

“They have figured out how to make adaptations and how to make the systems work under most conditions, even pretty extreme ones, and that is something [many] U.S. companies just don’t have because … we are not in the same environment right now,” Pettyjohn told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Ukraine is facing a real, living, breathing enemy that is constantly adapting.”

The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) awarded contracts this month to develop low-cost drone prototypes for testing as one-way munitions at extended ranges. Four U.S. companies won contracts, two of which partnered with Ukrainian UAS firms.

The goal of the DIU program, dubbed Artemis, is to have prototypes ready in fiscal 2025—meaning by Sept. 30. According to Artemis program manager Trent Emeneker, the DIU program will create a new category of weapons not currently in the U.S. arsenal. The Artemis program is structured to rapidly produce large quantities of the new drones than conventional defense programs.

“The U.S. does not have cheap, mass-produced, fielded capabilities in this space,” Emeneker wrote in an email to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There is no reasonable timeline from a program of record to deliver a similar capability in the next four-five years, and almost certainly not at the price points that we will deliver at.”

The deals follow by six six months a Pentagon announcement that it would provide $800 million to support Ukraine’s ability to mass-produce long-range drones, which have demonstrated marked improvement at striking Russian targets hundreds of kilometers away.

Ukraine is experiencing rapid growth in uncrewed systems and “capabilities in response to constantly emerging and evolving threats, and is where we see the most rapid advances in capabilities, in the constantly evolving battlefield,” Emeneker said. “Because [Ukrainian] firms are so closely tied to the end user, their feedback and iteration loops are incredibly fast.”

For Artemis, DIU partnered with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment to award contracts to:

AeroVironment, the U.S. maker of Switchblade loitering munitions

Dragoon Technology, five year-old small-drone startup based in Tuscon, Ariz., and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Swan, a little-known defense firm focused on autonomy and an unnamed Ukrainian partner

Auterion, an autonomy specialist with offices in the U.S. and Switzerland, also partnered with a Ukrainian UAS firm

The Pentagon declined to release the names of the Ukrainian companies for operational security reasons, Emeneker said.

Kateryna Bondar, fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the inclusion of Ukrainian firms is a step toward more effective collaboration between the two country’s defense industries.

The U.S. defense industry strives to make the most advanced unmanned systems, but there has been a “huge misunderstanding of what is needed to make system that actually feed the demand, feed the mission, so when I saw this award, I was like ‘OK, finally we have real collaboration,” Bondar told Air and Space Forces Magazine in an interview.

In the past, U.S. companies mostly preferred to hire Ukrainian engineers or collaborate with drone operators instead of partnering with Ukrainian firms, Bondar said.

Part of the reason is that Ukrainian firms are not creating new technology but instead figuring out how to use existing tech in creative ways that are easy to mass-produce, she said.

“Ukranians are still not very accustomed to doing defense business in Western ways,” Bondar added, citing a second concern for U.S. firms. For example, a U.S. company will offer a deal that pays a license a small amount of money for each use of their software—while Ukrainians want money up front, said Bondar, who is Ukrainian and frequently communicates with the Ukrainian defense industry as well as its military forces.

“These are probably cultural issues; we have to realize that Ukraine is still a post-Soviet country and still has some post-Soviet mentality and the fear of the future,” Bondar said. “They are not ready to make obligations for the next 20 years and wait for the income. They want money right here and right now.”

Pettyjohn said the divide goes beyond culture. “There is also an urgency divide” in that Ukrainian companies don’t care about conducting lengthy testing certifications, she said. “They are fielding capabilities that they want to get on the battlefield today.”

The Artemis program grows out of the 2024 defense budget to quickly provide loitering munitions capable of operating in GPS-denied and electromagnetic-warfare-challenged battlefields. The weapons need to be cheap enough to mass produce. Emeneker would not discuss program costs, however, so it is unclear what the price range for Artemis products could be. But Emeneker said the program could issue as many as four production awards by the end of fiscal 2025.

The final versions of these rapidly updatable, ground-launched systems must have a maximum range of at least 300 kilometers and be capable of launching quickly, navigating at low altitudes, and carrying a variety of payloads, according to the DIU release.

To meet DIU’s aggressive timeline, each of the four companies will submit multiple UAS prototypes for evaluation in time for demonstrations to be completed by the end of May. The prototypes will be in a “relevant environment, which includes Electronic Warfare and full denial of the Global Navigation Satellite System for position keeping,” Emeneker said. “This will also include tactical feedback on ease of launch, mission planning, logistics, and transportability.”

Pettyjohn said she is hopeful that working directly with Ukrainian companies will produce more flexible, modular systems that are capable of performing better in real-world battlefield conditions.

“I think we have seen that the U.S. testing and evaluation process for different systems is not as rigorous as the battlefield in Ukraine,” she said. “That is why a lot of U.S. weapons have failed. … Part of the success of the Ukrainian systems is their adaptability and the fact that they are modified sometimes on a weekly basis in terms of what frequencies they operate on, where the antennas are located. … It runs the gamut from small hardware changes to software changes.”

Some U.S. drone systems have performed effectively in Ukraine. AeroVironment’s Switchblade loitering munitions have seen success there, and the company won a five-year U.S. Army contract in August 2024 worth up to $990 million to field the system to U.S. combat units, according to AeroVironment’s website. Aerovironment did not provide comment for this story before publication.

For Bondar, the strength that Ukraine brings to the table is in its use of plug-and-play software rather than sophisticated hardware.

“This software can be installed on any platform. … Basically you make it like a Lego,” Bondar said. “The Russians are very good at reverse-engineering any hardware. They do it easily, fast, and it’s obvious, but to reverse-engineer software is way harder because Ukranians encrypt it. They protect it. Even if [the Russians] get a very good piece of equipment that is not damaged; it is almost impossible for them to get the software and reverse-engineer it.”

Caitlin Lee, director of the RAND Corporation’s Acquisition and Technology Policy Program, said that Artemis is an admirable effort but will face challenges as it matures.

“Developing more modular systems that accept different software and subsystems is much harder than it sounds, or DOD would have started doing it a long time ago,” Lee told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an email. “One major challenge that still lies ahead is figuring out how to allow for modularity—and meaningful size, weight, and power—at a low price point.”