DOD’s Transgender Ban Is Caught in Courts, Leaving Some Troops in Limbo 

DOD’s Transgender Ban Is Caught in Courts, Leaving Some Troops in Limbo 

April 21, 2025 | By David Roza

Hundreds, or possibly thousands, of transgender service members have returned to work after two judges ordered preliminary injunctions blocking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ban of transgender service members and recruits. But the long-term future for transgender service members will remain uncertain until these and possibly other cases play out in the courts.  

Two U.S. District Court judges, one in the District of Columbia and the other in the Western District of Washington state, each ordered preliminary injunctions in March, blocking the ban from being enforced pending judicial review of the legality of the order.  

The Pentagon appealed both orders. The D.C. appeals court granted an administrative stay, putting the lower court’s ruling on hold March 27. But it did so with a caveat: The government may not start discharging transgender service members while the court continues to review the government’s request for an emergency stay. The D.C. appeals court will hear oral arguments on that question on April 22. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, reviewing the other case, denied the government’s request for an administrative stay, then denied the government’s request for an emergency stay on April 18.

Following the March ruling, in order to comply with the injunction, the military services ordered back to work those transgender troops who had been placed on administrative leave prior to the order. They also suspended a policy requiring transgender military members to follow the dress, grooming, and physical fitness standards that applied to their birth sex. At the same time, the military paused both voluntary and involuntary separations for transgender troops, and lifted its hold on shipping transgender recruits to basic military training. A requirement that transgender members use the personal pronouns and bathrooms appropriate to their sex at birth was also suspended.

Now that the ninth circuit has denied the emergency stay, the ban cannot be enforced, said Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights and one of the lead attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the D.C. case.

Oral arguments for a stay order, such as those scheduled for April 22, are unusual; such cases are usually decided based on written briefs, Minter said. “I think [the appeals judges] are just trying to be extremely careful and make sure they issue the most well-informed, thoughtful decision they can,” he said. 

The government can still appeal to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay. Either way, fully resolving the case at that level could take years. A preliminary injunction blocking a 2017 attempt to limit transgender military service took two years to resolve, with the Supreme Court issuing an unsigned 5-4 decision to stay that lower-court ruling. A similar outcome is likely this time, as the court’s conservative majority has only grown since then.

There is no statute barring the military from discriminating based on gender identity, said retired Air Force Col. Joshua Kastenberg, a former Air Force judge now teaching law at the University of New Mexico.

“From a legal perspective of where the law is right now, the plaintiffs have a higher hill to climb than the administration does on this,” Kastenberg said.

For now, plaintiffs in the D.C. case, including 15 transgender troops and five recruits, would like to put the ban behind them and focus on work and training, said Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, which is also representing the plaintiffs. That could be more difficult for transgender troops who accepted voluntary separation offers from the administration earlier this year. All such separations are presently on hold. 

“It remains a fraught time in limbo and every individual is facing different circumstances,” said Col. Bree Fram, a transgender Guardian who noted she was sharing her personal views and not speaking on behalf of the Space Force or the government. 

The Ban 

President Donald Trump issued an executive order soon after his inauguration requiring the Pentagon to establish rules barring transgender individuals from military service. “It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”    

Gender dysphoria refers to the stress or anxiety people can feel, sometimes to severe levels, when their gender identity does not match the sex or gender they were assigned at birth. Not all transgender individuals feel gender dysphoria, but for those who do, transitioning to a different gender can help, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Transitioning can be accomplished through behavioral changes, such as dress and mannerisms, or through medical interventions, such as hormone replacement therapy or gender-transition surgery.   

In February, a senior defense official said there were 4,240 service members known to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and about 1,000 members have received gender-transition surgery since 2014; it is unclear how many of them are still serving. But not all transgender troops are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and not all those who do receive surgery. Estimates of the number of transgender individuals currently serving in the military range from between 1,320 and 6,630, according to a RAND study, to 15,500 according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which bills itself as “the leading research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.”  

There are no systems for tracking precise numbers of transgender service members, said Alex Wagner, who was Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs from 2022 to January 2025. “There are only two sexes specified in [the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System], and our uniform, grooming, and PT standards are based on those,” Wagner said.  

Courts generally defer to the military’s judgment on matters of national security, wrote judges Ana Reyes and Benjamin Settle, of the D.C. District Court and the Western District of Washington, respectively. In this case, however, they decided that deference was “unjustified” considering the possible harm to the plaintiffs’ livelihood, the alleged violation of equal protection and due process guarantees under the Fifth Amendment, and what they described as a lack of evidence to prove the government’s case.  

The government agrees “that Plaintiffs are mentally and physically fit to serve, have ‘served honorably,’ and ‘have satisfied the rigorous standards’ demanded of them,” Reyes wrote in her opinion. “Plaintiffs, they acknowledge, have ‘made America safer.’ So why discharge them and other decorated soldiers? Crickets from Defendants on this key question.” 

Reyes, a Biden appointee, issued her injunction March 18, and Settle, who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush, issued his March 27.  

Between the two cases, the plaintiffs included a Navy fighter pilot, an Army Special Forces medic, an Army artillery officer, an Air Force weapons officer, a Space Force satellite operator, and an ammunition loader on an AC-130 gunship, among other troops.

NGAD Images Doctored to Hide Most, If Not All, True Design Features

NGAD Images Doctored to Hide Most, If Not All, True Design Features

April 18, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Images of the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, released by the Air Force on March 21 when the program was awarded to Boeing, are mere placeholders and aren’t intended to accurately portray the aircraft, despite showing only a small portion of it, Air Force and industry officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The idea is to keep adversaries guessing about the true nature of the NGAD design.

The images show a stealthy-looking aircraft from its nose and cockpit back to the leading edges of the wings, which display pronounced dihedral, or an upward-angle. They also show canard foreplanes, which appear to be fixed, not articulated. No air intakes are shown.

Although many aviation experts have penned extensive analyses of the F-47 images, particularly of the canards—the use of which would be difficult to square with the notion of the F-47 as an “extremely low observable” design—they should be “taken with a large grain of salt,” an Air Force official said.

“We aren’t giving anything away in those pictures,” he said. “You’ll have to be patient” to see what it really looks like, he said, adding “Is there a resemblance? Maybe.”

A former senior Pentagon official, asked at the time of the F-47 announcement about the unusual canard and wing configuration, replied, “Why would you assume that’s the actual design?”

Sources said that, in anticipation of the NGAD announcement, Boeing artists produced images that already deliberately distorted some of the NGAD’s features, and the Air Force then further altered them. Boeing Defense, Space, and Security does not use any of the released images on its website and did not include them in its NGAD announcement press releases.

An Air Force spokesperson noted that the two images are available on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), where they are labeled as “artist renderings.” An Air Force spokesperson said they are “free to use.”

Shown is a graphical artist rendering of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Platform. U.S. Air Force graphic

As for the canards, the former defense official said “it’s possible to have canards and be stealthy,” but stopped short of saying that they are indeed a feature of the F-47.

China’s J-20 Mighty Dragon fighter, whose stealth Air Force officials have characterized as being in the same class as that of the F-22, employs a canard and delta wing design, but deflection of those control surfaces have to be managed extremely carefully so as to not to break the angles required to be low-observable to radar.   

The Air Force has a long history of withholding imagery of stealth aircraft until the real articles are about to break cover and fly where they can be seen—and photographed—by the public. But even then, the Air Force has consistently shown only distorted pictures in the early days of revealing new stealth aircraft.

B-2

In April 1988, the Air Force released the first official image of the Northrop B-2A stealth bomber; a painting that blurred-over the aircraft’s exhausts and presented the aircraft from an angle that made it difficult to determine its true wing angle of sweep, size, and intake configuration.   

Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard reveals the first official image of the then-secret F-117 at a press conference in 1988.
F-117

In November 1988, Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard displayed a heavily doctored photograph of the then-secret Lockheed F-117 stealth strike aircraft at a press briefing. The first image was foreshortened to disguise the true angle of sweep of the F-117’s wings, and create ambiguity about its engine intakes, exhausts, sensor apertures and size. The tactic was so successful that model companies rushed to production with kits that featured broad wings like those later seen on the B-2 bomber, rather than the true narrow, arrowhead shape of the F-117. The Air Force only fully revealed the F-117 in 1990, because the jet, which had previously only flown at night and mainly in restricted airspace, was about to participate in daytime training missions.

F-22

Lockheed used fictional but consistent imagery of a delta-wing fighter with canards in its late 1980s advertising during the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition. Only when the Air Force officially rolled out the YF-22 in 1990 was the true, conventional planform of the fighter revealed.

B-21

The first artist’s rendering of the B-21 Raider, released in 2016, obscured the air intakes and exhausts, and left most of the cockpit transparencies in shadow; again presenting the aircraft from an angle that made it hard to determine its size and wing angle of sweep.  Subsequent artist’s concepts were released in 2021 revealing the unusual configuration of the cockpit transparencies, and more detail of the depth of the keel and shape of the wings, but continued to conceal the intakes and exhausts. It was not until the aircraft’s rollout in December 2022 that details of the nose were revealed. At that event, photographers were strictly limited to photographing the aircraft from the front only. And it was not until the first flight from Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif. facility in November, 2023—not announced ahead of time—that the true shape of the planform and first details of the exhaust were captured by non-government photographers on the airfield fenceline. The Air Force did not release official images of the B-21 in flight until several months later.

The only departure from this pattern involved the Joint Strike Fighter. The companies in that contest were free to share artist’s concepts of their aircraft during the late 1990s, and the nearly-final configuration of the F-35 was displayed at the time Lockheed Martin was selected as the competition winner in 2001. At that time, however, there was less concern about adversaries gaining insight from such imagery: Russia’s military was considered moribund from lack of funds, while China was not yet considered capable of exploiting such information.

As Military SATCOM Use Grows, Rivals Vie to Cut SpaceX’s Market Share

As Military SATCOM Use Grows, Rivals Vie to Cut SpaceX’s Market Share

April 18, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—In the Space Force’s push to increase its consumption of commercial satellite capabilities, satellite communications stands out as the template. 

“If you look at the commercial satellite communications industry, we’ve been integrated for quite some time, providing our services alongside MILSATCOM,” said Todd Gossett, of SATCOM provider SES Space & Defense. “We’ve seen, over the past decade, a much more purposeful integration of these commercial capabilities into the military alongside purpose-built capabilities [into] what we now call hybrid space architecture.” 

The question now is how broadly the Space Force will look to leverage additional SATCOM providers.

Defense officials announced late last year they are expanding the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (PLEO) Satellite-Based Services program from a maximum of $900 million to $13 billion, based on demand across DOD. But some worry that there is insufficient competition in the marketplace.  

“From a strategic perspective, industry can meet those needs,” said Col. A.J. Ashby, senior materiel leader for strategic SATCOM, at the Space Symposium last week. “It’s just, how robust is that industrial complex to deliver those capabilities? What we don’t want to do is find ourselves in a situation where you have a single commercial provider that can deliver that capability, because if you find yourself in vendor lock, it could increase costs and delay delivering that capability to the warfighter. So we want to make sure that we have a robust and viable industrial base to deliver on all military capabilities.” 

SES, Iridium Communications, Inmarsat, and Viasat are all well-established, decades-old providers. But as in the space launch business, a singular dominant player has also emerged in SATCOM. And it’s the same firm: SpaceX, with its massive Starlink constellation. Out of $660 million in task orders already assigned for the PLEO program, most went to SpaceX, a defense official said last fall. Among the program’s 20 approved vendors, no one is close to SpaceX right now. 

“It’s just that SpaceX [and] Starlink was obviously first to market,” the official said at the time. 

Other companies are racing to catch up. Amazon aims to launch thousands of its Project Kuiper satellites in LEO, but has not yet put one in space. Others, like Canada’s Telesat, have plans for a LEO constellation but are hoping to differentiate their offerings in other ways, president of government solutions Chuck Cynamon told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

“We are geared towards enterprise, government, and defense,” said Cynamon, adding that because Telesat waited to pivot to its low-Earth orbit constellation, it has seen new Pentagon requirements and strategy released in the past year or so that it can “factor … into our offering.”

Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation in LEO, scheduled to reach space in 2026, will have advantages for the military over Starlink or even its militarized cousin, Starshield, Cynamon claimed. 

“One of the things that we think we’re offering that is a bit more unique … is the opportunity to offer a capacity pool, something that a government can own that would be sovereign,” Cynamon said. “So if the U.S. government owns a pool of capacity, whether it be bought by the volume or the throughput, it is theirs to own within the Lightspeed ecosystem…. They own the capacity, whether globally or regionally. They can sub-allocate it. So if you have various regions of the world that you want to concentrate your capacity,” the customer can do so.  

Assured access to commercial services in the event of a conflict or crisis is a crucial concern for the Space Force as it seeks to integrate its options into a more seamless whole. U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen N. Whiting said at the symposium that the Space Force is looking to leverage automation to gain flexibility and advantage.

“We are transforming our SATCOM resiliency by moving away from labor-intensive methods using stovepiped systems to automated systems that can maneuver between orbits and between different frequency bands to outpace our adversaries,” said Whiting. “Making SATCOM missions more robust and responsive and resilient is vital to meet the needs of our joint force on tactically relevant timelines.” 

Charlotte Gerhart, deputy director of military communications and PNT, highlighted that same approach for the Space Force’s tactical SATCOM requirements. “Our ability to put capability wherever we need to, when we need to do it, that mobility aspect, is one of the key things that we look at,” she said. “ … Our ability to command and control without being, for lack of a better term, constrained by other users on the system.” 

The Space Force is working on a “hybrid” SATCOM terminal that can shift between multiple frequencies and connect with both military and commercial constellations. So is the Navy, presenting opportunities for scale but also challenges to coordinate between the services.  

Cynamon and others in industry are urging Pentagon decision-makers “not to lock yourself into one provider terminal today,” such as Starlink’s dedicated SpaceX terminal. Telesat, he said, intends for its Lightspeed constellation to be terminal-agnostic, giving military customers more flexibility. 

Yet SpaceX’s ubiquity and proven performance are winning warfighting customers. The Air Force has used Starlink for forces everywhere from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, and in 2023 the Space Force awarded SpaceX a $70 million contract for Starshield. Breaking that lock will be a lucrative business for others, but competing for market share will be hard given Starlink’s head start. 

AFA Inaugurates New Headquarters with Doolittle Raider Toast

AFA Inaugurates New Headquarters with Doolittle Raider Toast

April 17, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Air & Space Forces Association celebrated the grand opening of its new offices with a decades-old tradition recalling its founding president, Medal of Honor hero Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, and the stories of the Doolittle Raiders, who executed the first strike on Imperial Japan five months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin headlined a star-studded crowd of current and former military and civilian leaders.

The Raider toast dates back to the early years after World War II, when Doolittle and the other survivors began to gather for reunions celebrating the legendary April 18, 1942, raid over Tokyo. Over the years, the survivors among the 80 Airmen who executed the raid would gather to raise a glass in honor of their comrades who had died in the previous 12 months: “To those who have gone.”  

The last “Doolittle Raider,” Lt. Col. Richard Cole, died a day after the 77th anniversary of the raid, on April 9, 2019.

AFA revived the toast in 2024, inviting other AFA Chapters and Air Force units to join in the celebration remotely. This year expanded the theme by tying it to the ceremonial opening of its new building in Pentagon City, steps away from the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. 

“It’s only fitting that the ribbon-cutting of today’s new headquarters should segue into a ceremony that honors the men who laid the groundwork for American airpower,” AFA President and CEO retired Lt. Gen. Burt Field said. “Because really that’s how AFA started, all the way back in 1946, before there was an independent Air Force. And then fast forward to when the Space Force was established, and we altered our name. … As long as there are Airmen and Guardians, there will be an AFA advocating for them, educating the public about them, and supporting them and their families.” 

Allvin was toastmaster for the occasion, which he said marked an opportunity to not only reflect on the past, but draw inspiration for the future. 

“We need to celebrate these times, not only to honor the memory of those courageous Airmen, but to reignite ourselves: to think about, ‘What does it take?’ … These were not hand-selected Airmen who were trained over time. These were 80 ordinary Airmen who did an extraordinary thing. And [so] think about, ‘What can be possible?’” 

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, speaking before the ribbon-cutting, cited Doolittle’s legacy, which goes beyond the raid. 

“On the fourth of February, 1946, the Air Force Association was not founded as a veterans group, but rather as an advocate for airpower,” Saltzman said. “Thanks to the efforts of its first president, Jimmy Doolittle, the organization rapidly made its mark. It played a key role in driving U.S. government to establish the Department of the Air Force in 1947 and its campaigning helped ensure the Air Force’s status as a separate and coequal service with the Army and the Navy. It’s something I know a little bit about, and that’s not an easy task.” 

Scores of Air Force and Space Force leaders past and present, industry officials, AFA employees, and guests—along with hundreds following along online—toasted “to those who have gone,” and then celebrated the road ahead. 

“I’m pretty sure Jimmy Doolittle would be very, very proud of how this organization has evolved and continued to look forward,” Allvin said. 

AFA’s Grand Opening and 83rd Doolittle Raiders Memorial Toast on April 17, 2025. Photo by Jud McCrehin/Air & Space Forces Association
Maryland Guard A-10s Still Flying in ‘Combat Readiness’ Exercise

Maryland Guard A-10s Still Flying in ‘Combat Readiness’ Exercise

April 17, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Maryland Air National Guard may be starting to say goodbye to its A-10 “Warthogs,” but it is not slowing down in the meantime, as it recently wrapped up a 11-day “combat readiness” exercise along the East Coast to prepare some of its Airmen for a planned deployment to the Middle East.

The exercise, which ran from April 1-11, included operations from Badin, N.C.; Tampa, Fla.; Savannah, Ga.; and Fort Meade, Md., a 175th Wing spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Six A-10s from the 104th Fighter Squadron took part, as the wing’s Airmen conducted close air support operations and assisted naval forces in controlling simulated surface threats.

“I’ve seen a lot of success in our responses, especially at the tactical level,” Capt. Casey Smith, 175th Wing chief of plans and exercises, said in a release. “We had very fast response times, showcasing the strength of our training and our ability to adapt quickly under pressure.”

Airmen also practiced setting up and sustaining forward bases while establishing security perimeters. The Airmen focused on responding to scenarios that mirrored deployment conditions, including ground and cyber attacks.  

Airmen assigned to the 175th Wing, Maryland Air National Guard, construct a small shelter system at the 145th Regional Training Site in Badin, North Carolina, April 4, 2025. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. Christopher Schepers

“Some of our Wing staff are scheduled to be deployed in FY 2026,” the spokesperson said. “We’re partnering up with [the] Wisconsin Air National Guard to take on a mission for U.S. CENTCOM.”

U.S. Central Command oversees the military operations in the Middle East, and the Air Force has had a steady flow of deployments to the region following Israel’s war on Hamas began in October 2023.

That flow has increased as of late, as the Pentagon tries to counter Iranian-backed Houthi threats and to reopen shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The service has since deployed six B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia and several A-10s from the Idaho Air National Guard in support of its campaign targeting the Houthis.

However, the Maryland ANG’s “tank-killer” aircraft won’t be part of the upcoming deployment; the spokesperson said that the 175th Wing will instead be deploying as part of a Expeditionary Air Base team, which focuses on consolidating leadership and support functions into cohesive teams to enable aircraft operations, instead of fulfilling those functions piecemeal.

Airmen assigned to the 175th Wing, Maryland Air National Guard, construct a small shelter system at the 145th Regional Training Site in Badin, North Carolina, April 4, 2025. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. Christopher Schepers

Since 2023, the Air Force has been sending XAB teams of Airmen to the Middle East, as the service replaced its Air Expeditionary Wings with expeditionary air base units. The goal is to move to Air Task Forces, then Combat Wings, as Airmen spend more and more time training together stateside.

The first A-10 from the 175th Wing flew to the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona last month, and by the beginning of fiscal 2026, the fleet will be nearly fully retired, as the wing plans to transition to a cyber mission without any aircraft, pending an environmental review this fall.

The decision, which leaves Maryland as the only state without a flying mission, has sparked strong pushback from Guard leaders and local politicians State leaders, who have vowed to push for the restoration of a flying mission. Progress, however, remains elusive.

Air Guardsmen Pull Off ‘Remarkable’ Antarctica Rescue

Air Guardsmen Pull Off ‘Remarkable’ Antarctica Rescue

April 17, 2025 | By David Roza

A pair of Wyoming Air National Guardsmen, an Active-Duty flight surgeon, and a flight crew from the New York Air National Guard teamed up to play a crucial role in a dramatic rescue earlier this year, helping save the life of a man suffering from a heart attack in Antarctica, one of the most remote regions on Earth.

Maj. Nate Krueger, a flight nurse, and Master Sgt. Lyndsey Glotfelty, an aeromedical technician, are both assigned to the 187th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, but they were deployed to McMurdo Station, an American outpost which supports scientific research in Antarctica year-round. Maj. Thomas Powell is currently flight surgeon there. The U.S. military makes frequent appearances at McMurdo as part of Operation Deep Freeze, the nearly 70-year-old ongoing mission to keep McMurdo and other stations in Antarctica supplied and supported.

The deployment heated up Feb. 13 when a 60-year-old man collapsed in McMurdo’s galley. A civilian contractor who had participated in more than 20 Deep Freeze Missions, the man had a “widow maker” heart attack “caused by a complete blockage of the left anterior descending artery,” according to an April 16 press release written by Wyoming’s 153rd Airlift Wing.

First responders—including Powell, Krueger, Glotfelty, and medical professionals from McMurdo’s fire department and the National Science Foundation—started CPR and gave the man several defibrillator shocks on the way to the McMurdo clinic. About 40 minutes of CPR, epinephrine shots, and eight defibrillation shocks later, the patient was stable, but he needed higher care immediately.

air guard antarctica
Master Sgt. Lyndsey Glotfelty, 187th Wyoming Air National Guard aeromedical evacuation technician, provide in-flight care for a heart attack victim aboard a LC-130 in route to Christchurch, New Zealand, Feb. 13, 2025. (U.S. Air Force courtesy photo)

That was a challenge: temperatures were around negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and one rescue attempt was abandoned due to severe blizzards. A Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft with more medical staff onboard landed on McMurdo’s ice runway, but it was a U.S. Air Force LC-130 that flew the patient to Christchurch, New Zealand: a seven-hour, 2,500 mile flight.

Also known as the Skibird, each of the Air Force’s 10 LC-130s are operated by the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing, thought it was not immediately clear if the rescue LC-130 was already at McMurdo or flew in from another location.

All told, it was about 12 hours in between the patient’s collapse and his arrival at the hospital in Christchurch, where he received two stents to reopen his arteries, according to the press release. He walked out of the hospital just a few days later.

Due to its remote location, McMurdo is not an ideal place to have a heart attack, but the smooth teamwork of the providers on site saved the man’s life, Krueger said.

“This was a truly remarkable case,” he said in the press release. “From the moment of collapse to the successful evacuation, every step was executed with precision and urgency. The coordination between emergency responders, the clinic team, and the flight crew made all the difference.”

Maj. Thomas Powell, McMurdo’s flight surgeon, described the rescue as “a win through teamwork and rapid emergency response.”

“Having a robust cooperative partnership between the National Science Foundation and the military was key to ensuring rapid medical care and evacuation of the patient,” he added.

Still, it wasn’t the only Anatarctica rescue mission flown in recent months. A March press release by the 109th Airlift Wing wrote that its Airmen carried out nine medical evacuations during its Antarctica support season from October to February. Five aircraft and 400 Airmen were deployed to McMurdo, where they moved 1,076 passengers, 900 tons of cargo, and 120,000 gallons of fuel as part of Operation Deep Freeze. 

Northrop Grumman Says Sentinel Program Not Affected by Promontory Blast

Northrop Grumman Says Sentinel Program Not Affected by Promontory Blast

April 17, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The building destroyed by an explosion at Northrop Grumman’s Promontory, Utah, solid rocket motor complex on April 16 wasn’t directly supporting the LGM-35A Sentinel strategic missile effort, and the accident won’t delay that program or others, a company spokesperson said.

“The incident at our Utah facility on April 16 will not affect our progress on any Northrop Grumman programs,” a company spokesperson said. “Specifically, nothing produced in the building supports the Sentinel program.”

The Air Force had no comment and referred all queries about the accident to Northrop.

The company declined to say what specific activities were conducted in the building, which was largely destroyed by an explosion at about 7:35 am local time, although industry sources said the building was used in part to store materials used to make solid rocket motors.

Company officials said there were “no major injuries” to personnel near the building. The building’s sides were blown out by the explosion, leaving only framing and what appears to be interior large-diameter piping and ductwork. A fire inside was put out by first responders.

An industry source said the accident won’t affect Northrop’s ability to meet its commitments, and that the company has “other sources” for the materials destroyed in the blast.

Local news outlets said Northrop had not yet responded to their questions about what chemicals may have been released as a result of the explosion.

Company officials were anxious to dissociate the accident from Sentinel, as that program is already under intense scrutiny after cost and schedule overruns triggered a review mandated by the Nunn-McCurdy Act last year. The Pentagon has certified the program to continue, but the expected cost has skyrocketed to around $140 billion.

Pentagon leaders have told Congress the bulk of the added cost has to do with the massive civil engineering effort needed to deploy the missiles in new or renovated silos, with associated launch control facilities. They have said that development of the Sentinel missile itself is on track and cost.

Northrop’s sprawling Promontory complex, in a desert area north of the Great Salt Lake, is spread out precisely because the work there involves highly volatile materials, and has now been the scene of four serious accidents over the last 40 years, three of which took place under previous owners:

  • In 1985, building M-75 was destroyed by an explosion attributed to static discharge which ignited rocket motor materials. The plant was at that time operated by Morton Thiokol.
  • In 1987, five people were killed by an explosion while working with a rocket motor associated with the M-X, or Peacekeeper strategic missile.
  • In 2005, when the facility was operating under Alliant Tech Systems/Thiokol, one person was killed and another injured when an explosion occurred as they were transferring the chemical compound triethoxy-trinitrobenzene, or TETNB, from filter trays into five-gallon buckets.
  • No cause has yet been identified for the April 16, 2025 explosion. Northrop said the accident is being investigated, but did not comment on what agency or agencies are conducting the investigation.

Northrop acquired Orbital ATK and its solid rocket motor business in 2018. The unit has since been reorganized as Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.

Industry sources said Northrop may withhold further details of the accident and its impact on company activities until Northrop leaders conduct their first-quarter results on April 22.

Air Force Tests Out New Air-to-Air Training in Europe Focused on Drones

Air Force Tests Out New Air-to-Air Training in Europe Focused on Drones

April 17, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

U.S. Air Forces in Europe is using one of its premier F-16 squadrons to develop and practice new tactics and weapons to counter drones. 

The exercise stems from the service’s experience in the Middle East, fighting off Iranian and Houthi attacks.

The 555th Fighter Squadron, based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, participated in the Weapons System Evaluation Program (WSEP) exercise this month in the United Kingdom. The exercise, commonly known as Combat Archer, is typically held in the United States at ranges at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., and Hill Air Force Base, Utah. 

Air Force experts were on hand to assess the air-to-air performance of the squadron.

In a statement, U.S. Air Forces in Europe boss Gen. James B. Hecker said hosting the exercise in the U.K. saves millions of dollars and provides much-needed training for its units in what it hopes is a repeatable model.

Traveling to the U.S. for training would normally cost millions of dollars—likely cost-prohibitive as a standalone exercise—and require tanker and airlift support to get equipment and personnel across the Atlantic, USAFE officials said.

“Holding the exercise in the European area of responsibility provides significant strategic advantages, reducing the need for transatlantic aircraft movements, and resulting in substantial cost savings,” Hecker said.

Over seven days of flying this month, the F-16s from the 555th or “Triple Nickle” Fighter Squadron flew approximately 70 sorties, firing off around 10 AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles and over 60 rockets at target drones at the U.K.’s MOD Aberporth range on the west coast of Wales near Cardigan Bay, a USAFE spokesperson said. 

The squadron practiced on Banshee Jet 80 and Banshee Whirlwind drones from the British company QinetiQ, a defense tech company that operates the drones and ranges. That’s different from previous Combat Archer exercises in the U.S., which use the QF-16—old F-16s turned into unmanned targets—and the BQM-167A, another high-performance target drone.

“We don’t really want to shoot at a threat that is representative of a jet. We’re looking to shoot at things that are smaller and that are a better threat representation,” Lt. Col. Eric “Diesel” Kitaif, the commander of the 555th Fighter Squadron, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a video interview.

“They’re much smaller with a lower infrared signature than the traditional drones that people shoot at Archer,” Kitaif said. “For what I am trying to train my squadron to do, the threat that we are fighting out here is perfect. They’re slow, they’re hard to detect with the radar, they’re low IR signature. We actually get to see all those things and we’ve learned a lot from fighting those two threats.”

Pilots, weapons, and maintenance personnel and equipment from Aviano’s 31st Fighter Wing deployed to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, for the exercise, including:

  • 555th Fighter Squadron
  • 555th Fighter Generation Squadron
  • 31st Logistics Readiness Squadron
  • 31st Munitions Squadron
  • 31st Maintenance Squadron
  • 31st Operations Support Squadron.

The rocket system being tested is the AGR-20 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS)—Hydra-70 rockets that have been converted with a laser guidance kit to turn them into precision-guided munitions. It was designed for air-to-ground use but has been used to shoot down Houthi drones in the past year, U.S. officials previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

The rockets cost less than $40,000, the officials say, a significant advancement in driving down the cost of defeating the hundreds of drone attacks in the Middle East. To shoot down drones, the Air Force has previously used AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range radar-guided missiles, which cost roughly $1 million each, or short-range AIM-9 Sidewinders, which carry a price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the variant, with the costly AIM-9X model commonly used by the USAF.

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon flies through the sky to launch a missile during Combat Archer UK at RAF Lakenheath, England, April 15, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Zachary Jakel

“We’re training to a new threat and a new weapon to handle that threat,” Kitaif said.

To judge the exercise, the 83rd Fighter Weapons Squadron from Tyndall brought a 33-person team, fulfilling a pre-deployment air-to-air weapons employment evaluation requirement for the 555th Fighter Squadron, a spokesperson for U.S. Air Forces in Europe said. USAFE has often provided combat airpower in the Middle East in recent years, including F-16s from Aviano’s 510th Fighter Squadron and the 555th Fighter Squadron.

”We want to learn while we’re here. WSEP is evaluating us, but in my book, we are training,” Kitaif said.

“Most of us have never shot a missile,” he added. “So getting to see that, in and of itself, is a training opportunity you don’t get anywhere. And that can directly translate to combat.“

The F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing at Lakenheath helped defeat Iran’s attack on Israel in April alongside other U.S. Air Force and coalition aircraft, downing dozens of drones. The drone threat is also a real-world concern in Europe, as Russia has used some of the same types of drones seen in the Middle East to attack Ukrainian troops, infrastructure, and cities.

“We were deployed just before them,” Kitaif said of the 48th Fighter Wing. “We were also tasked to do this type of defense against the one-way attack drones. … We did not have the opportunity for the training prior to go to actually see what it would look like in our targeting pod, to run an intercept against something that is that difficult to attack at air speed and shoot missiles at it. Back then, we were loaded up with AIM-9Xs, ready to attack one-way attack drones. Now we are training to the AGR-20 FALCO system. I can carry a lot more of them, and they’re much, much more cost-effective against one-way attack drones.”

One drone was shot down with an AIM-9M, but most shots did not use live warheads and were instead “kinematic” kills so the drones can be reused, a USAFE spokesperson said.

Some Air Force F-16s in the Middle East have been seen fitted with infrared targeting pods and one or two Hydra rocket pods, as well as AMRAAMs and AIM-9s—F-16s can carry 14 rockets per station, up to 28 rockets. To guide an APKWS rocket, the target must be laser-designated or “lazed,” unlike more expensive “fire-and-forget” missiles. This means air-to-air use of the rocket pods is most suited to defeating slow-flying targets such as one-way attack drones. That’s practice the 555th Fighter Squadron needs.

“Employing these is challenging to do,” Kitaif said. An F-16 can employ the rockets on its own, but it must laze the target and fire the rocket, so multiple F-16s make the job easier.

“I need to put it in the right regime, and I need to make sure that there is laser energy on the target. And so getting both of those things to happen can be challenging to be the person both employing the munition and the person lazing that munition,” Kitaif said. “None of us have ever trained to [use rockets] air-to-air, and almost all of us have never trained to it air-to-ground either. So it’s beneficial to be able to carry these out here and get to train to it.”

Explosion Destroys Building at Northrop Grumman Solid Rocket Motor Facility

Explosion Destroys Building at Northrop Grumman Solid Rocket Motor Facility

April 16, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Editor’s Note: This story was updated April 17 with additional details from Northrop Grumman. Further coverage is also available here.

An April 16 explosion destroyed a building at Northrop Grumman’s Innovation Systems plant in Promontory, Utah, where the company makes solid rocket motors for government and commercial customers.

There was no immediate report of casualties, which occurred at 7:35 am local time. Local officials said they are investigating the accident.

Northrop officials say the accident will not delay any of its programs. The Air Force referred inquiries to Northrop.

A Northrop spokesman would not characterize the function of the building, and whether it was involved in production of solid rocket motors, or SRMs. Industry sources later told Air & Space Forces Magazine the building was used in part to store materials used to make solid rocket motors.

Northrop’s Innovation Systems—formerly Orbital ATK—accounts for nearly 90 percent of the SRM capacity in the U.S., a capability that supports Air Force, NASA, and commercial space launch activities.

A local television station flew a helicopter over the building, showing no active fire but major wreckage.

Crucially for the Air Force, Northrop plans to use large solid rocket motors developed in-house for the new LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. However, Northrop officials said the destroyed building is not involved in the Sentinel program.

The facility is located north of the Great Salt Lake and northwest of the Ogden Air Logistics Complex, which has responsibility for Minuteman III rocket motor sustainment, among other systems.

What is now Northrop Grumman’s Innovation Systems was once the Thiokol company, which was acquired by Alliant Tech Systems in 2001. Alliant Tech Systems became ATK, and merged with Orbital Sciences Corp. in 2015. Three years later, Northrop acquired Orbital/ATK.

The nation’s large solid rocket motor capacity is so concentrated with Northrop that it had to agree to be a merchant provider of SRMs to Boeing in the competition to build the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, now known as the Sentinel system. Northrop was selected for the contract in 2020, after Boeing announced it would not bid, claiming it could not compete with Northrop’s in-house SRM advantage.

The next-largest producer of SRMs in the U.S. is Aerojet Rocketdyne, since 2023 a part of L3Harris.