B-52 Flies with Israeli Fighters over Mediterranean Sea

B-52 Flies with Israeli Fighters over Mediterranean Sea

March 4, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber flew with the Israeli Air Force and Royal Air Force over the eastern Mediterranean Sea on March 4, a U.S. defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The sortie marks the third Bomber Task Force mission to the Middle East region in just the past month.

The B-52 took off from RAF Fairford, U.K.; traveled over the Mediterranean; and orbited off the coast of Israel, where it flew alongside Israeli Air Force F-35s and F-15s. The mission included integration with Royal Air Force fighters as well. The RAF has fighters based in the Mediterranean that support missions in the Middle East.

On March 6, the U.S. military confirmed a B-52 flew to the Middle East earlier in the week, “strengthening partner interoperability and demonstrating force projection capabilities in the region,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the region.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed details of their participation in the mission in a post on social media.

“During the flight, the forces practiced operational coordination between the two militaries to enhance their ability to address various regional threats,” the IDF said in a post on X. The Israeli military said their alliance with CENTCOM “continues to develop and strengthen.”

That mission came just two weeks after B-52s flew “multiple missions over the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea without landing,” Air Forces Central said in a Feb. 20 press release. Those missions, which were carried out over two consecutive days, included live weapons drops. They also included a rare Feb. 17 flight of two U.S. B-52s accompanied by Iraqi F-16s.

“Bomber Task Force missions demonstrate the U.S. military’s ability to rapidly deploy combat power anywhere in the world and integrate it with Coalition and partner forces to enhance U.S. Central Command’s ability to promote security and stability in the region,” Air Forces Central (AFCENT) said in a February press release.

All the recent Bomber Task Force missions to the Middle East were flown by B-52s temporarily based at RAF Fairford. Those BUFFS are from the 69th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron at Minot Air Force Base, N.D.

Two U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress long-range strategic bombers, two F-15E Strike Eagles and two Iraqi Air Force F-16IQ Vipers fly in formation over Iraq, Feb. 17, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Gerald R. Willis

Bombers have played an increasingly important role in the Middle East in the past year. “Beyond their role as a deterrent through an active presence, the bombers have served to amplify U.S. strike capabilities against Iranian-affiliated militia groups throughout the past year,” AFCENT said last month.

In February 2024, the U.S. used B-1B Lancer bombers to strike 85 targets in Syria and Iraq to retaliate for the killing of three U.S. Army Soldiers at Tower 22 in Jordan in a militia drone attack. That site supports the Al Tanf Garrison just across the border in eastern Syria. 

In October 2024, a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber struck Houthi facilities in Yemen. And in November 2024, six B-52s deployed to CENTCOM for 45 days—the first BUFF deployment to the region since 2019—and participated in airstrikes against the Islamic State group.

On Feb. 27, two B-52s also conducted a simulated weapons drop in Turkey, which, while officially in the area of responsibility for U.S. European Command, borders Syria, Iraq, and Iran, countries covered by U.S. Central Command.

The BUFFs kept up their busy stretch March 3, as they flew operated a BTF mission with Romanian F-16s, Croatian Rafales, and Bulgarian MiG-29s, U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) announced.

A U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress alongside Israeli Air Force F-35s and F-15s over the eastern Mediterranean Sea, March 4, 2025. IDF photo
WATCH: Breaking Down ‘Fighter Drones’ and More with Heather Penney

WATCH: Breaking Down ‘Fighter Drones’ and More with Heather Penney

March 4, 2025 | By Tobias Naegele

AURORA, Colo.—Air & Space Forces Magazine caught up with Heather Penney, former F-16 pilot and now a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, at the AFA Warfare Symposium to break down the biggest developments from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin’s keynote address at the conference. Editor-in-Chief Tobias Naegele and Penney discuss Allvin’s call for “more Air Force,” his focus on readiness, and the new designations for Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones.

The Biggest Storylines at AFA Colorado 2025 with Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula

The Biggest Storylines at AFA Colorado 2025 with Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula

March 4, 2025 | By Tobias Naegele

AURORA, Colo.—Air & Space Forces Magazine sat down with retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, to talk about the biggest themes from the 2025 AFA Warfare Symposium, from the new Trump administration’s focus on readiness, discussions about resources, and the Space Force’s future.

WATCH: Boeing and the Space Force’s Global Advantage

WATCH: Boeing and the Space Force’s Global Advantage

March 4, 2025

As space becomes an increasingly important warfighting domain, Kay Sears sits down with Air & Space Forces Magazine to look at how Boeing’s strategy is evolving to equip the U.S. Space Force with a decisive mission advantage through global control, global reach, and global strike capabilities.

Sears is vice president and general manager of Space, Intelligence & Weapon Systems for Boeing Defense, Space & Security, which includes space exploration and launch programs, satellites, munitions, missiles, weapon system deterrents, maritime undersea and subsidiaries (BI&A, Millennium, Insitu, Liquid Robotics, Spectrolab and Argon).

Space Force Leaders: SDA Mission Is ‘Critical’ Despite Uncertainty

Space Force Leaders: SDA Mission Is ‘Critical’ Despite Uncertainty

March 4, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant only spent a few weeks running the Space Development Agency in addition to his regular job as head of Space Systems Command. But he learned something important from the experience. 

“No one in their right mind should have two full-time jobs on opposite ends of the country,” he told reporters with a laugh at the AFA Warfare Symposium. 

Garrant was named acting head of SDA in mid-January when Director Derek M. Tournear was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into a contract award. SSC is based at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., and SDA is in Chantilly, Va., but it wasn’t just the distance that made leading both challenging, Garrant said.

“Both organizations deserve full-time leadership. Both organizations have a lot going on, very busy,” he said. 

Garrant said he came away full of praise for SDA and endorsed its continued independence within the Space Force—a key vote of confidence amid uncertainty gripping the agency. 

While Space Systems Command is the main acquisition arm of the Space Force and handles most of its biggest programs, the Space Development Agency is working on fielding hundreds of small satellites in low-Earth orbit on timelines previously unseen in military space. 

In early February, the Department of the Air Force tapped veteran acquisition official William Blauser to take over for Garrant as acting director. The agency has canceled the contract that led to Tournear’s suspension, but it is unclear when or even if he will return. Meanwhile, a recent Pentagon memo called for an “independent review team” to determine the “health” of SDA and its programs, and consider whether it should remain a semi-independent acquisition arm within the Space Force or be absorbed into other structures. 

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman told reporters that SDA’s mission is “critical” to many of the Pentagon’s biggest plans, including joint all-domain command and control and the Golden Dome missile defense shield. Because of that, he said, officials need to take stock of the agency’s unconventional approach. 

“They take advantage of new techniques for doing acquisition. We want to make sure that taking advantage of those new techniques for acquisition is serving well and getting us where we need to go,” he said. “We want to learn quickly about it. I think that’s why [acquisition and sustainment] wanted to kind of take a take a pause and take a look and do some reviews to make sure that we like what we’re getting to.”  

Garrant, for his part, was highly complimentary of SDA’s work. 

“An incredibly proud workforce … incredibly committed to the mission. They absolutely believe in what they’re doing and really pushing boundaries,” he said. 

The agency was charged with three missions, Garrant noted: disrupting space acquisition, building up the industrial base, and delivering capabilities. On all three fronts, he said, it has made progress—he even praised SDA’s work on laser communications, pushing back on a recent report from the Government Accountability Office that warned the agency was going too fast on unproven tech. 

All in all, Garrant made it clear he supports SDA’s continued work. 

“I think the Space Development Agency will continue to be an incredibly important part of the Space Force, independent and completely separate from SSC,” said Garrant. 

How Is the Space Force Handling Civilian Personnel Cuts?

How Is the Space Force Handling Civilian Personnel Cuts?

March 4, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

AURORA, Colo.—Looming cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian workforce will present a particular challenge to the Space Force with its proportionally high number of civilian Guardians, leaders said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said he is considering the impacts of the personnel cuts being directed by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal workforce.

More than 4,000 of the Space Force’s 14,000 members are civilians—nearly three-tenths of the service.

“The orders are pretty clear, and we’re going to follow those orders,” Saltzman said. “Am I worried about it? I’m always worried about making sure we have the right workforce to do the missions that we’ve been given.” 

He’s not the only Space Force general thinking about it.

A “considerable number” of civilian employees of the Space Force’s main acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, had opted to take the “deferred resignation” option offered by the new administration, said SSC commander Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant. Under the offer, devised by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency commission, federal employees can stop working now but be placed on administrative leave and continue to get paid until the end of September. The terms are designed to entice as many people as possible to accept the offer. 

“As the commander of SSC, I’m committed to executing the administration’s direction and vision,” Garrant said, adding that he was “working really closely with our S-1 Human Resources team to do it smartly where we can, and to make sure that we’re not making workforce cuts in strategic career fields and areas.” 

On Feb. 26, the Department of the Air Force said in a memo that some of those who had opted for deferred resignation—those in hard-to-fill positions or with special skills or whose work was particularly vital—would be deemed “exempt or ineligible” for the program. Those positions included flight instructors, those in certain cybersecurity jobs, and Foreign Military Sales personnel. The department also instituted a hiring freeze. 

Garrant said he also had a number of probationary civilian employees who were likely to be let go “just like they have in other departments.” Probationary employees don’t enjoy the same legal protections as fully fledged federal staff and can fired more or less at will. 

He also noted that the Office of Personnel Management had ordered a “reduction in force” of the federal government. 

Although he didn’t give numbers, Garrant said that the potential impact of all these measures on the SSC civilian workforce “is in line with what you’re seeing and hearing from a total federal government reduction of the federal workforce on the civilian side.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he anticipates cutting the Pentagon civilian workforce by 5 to 8 percent. Applied to the entire Space Force, that would be a few hundred people.

While the staff reductions loom, the Space Force—along with the rest of the federal government—is still operating under a continuing resolution (CR) and doesn’t have a 2025 budget.

“We have to have a budget,” Garrant said, “A yearlong CR would just exacerbate the federal workforce issues with some agencies.” 

He said that these “additive challenges” had combined to create “a very stressful time, mostly because  [they’re] all on top of each other.” 

But Saltzman pointed out that the Space Force “was designed to be lean and agile.”  

“We’ve been doing the mission for five years with far less people than we have today, and by and large, you still get GPS when you turn your phone on.” He called the service’s achievements with such a limited headcount “pretty impressive.” 

“The workforce ebbs and flows,” he concluded, “In my 33 years, I’ve seen several of these issues, and you just reprioritize and do what you’ve got to do.” 

F-35 Hits 1 Million Flight Hours as Price Rise Stays Below Inflation

F-35 Hits 1 Million Flight Hours as Price Rise Stays Below Inflation

March 3, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—The unit price for the latest lot of the F-35 fighter will come in below the rate of inflation, Lockheed Martin’s manager for the program said March 3. The disclosure came on the same day Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney announced that the F-35 and its F135 engine have each surpassed 1 million flight hours.

“We were able to keep the price of the airplane … under that inflation curve,” Chauncey McIntosh, Lockheed vice president and F-35 general manager, told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium. He did not, however, disclose the price of the F-35 airframe reached with the Joint Program Office.

The JPO and Lockheed reached a “handshake deal” on Lot 18 in November 2024 valued at $11.8 billion and covering 145 aircraft. In addition to the aircraft, that deal covers spares, engineering, and other items but not the engine. The JPO has said it will announce the airframe unit cost when the contract is finalized, which McIntosh said would come in the second quarter of 2025.

The JPO also tends to announce F-35 costs with the engine included. The F135 engine is provided to Lockheed as government-furnished equipment.

As yet, there’s no handshake deal on Lot 18 engines. Industry and government sources said the JPO and Pratt are still far apart on a price and predict a deal much later in the year.

The previous lot’s contract had the F-35A price at $75 million per airframe, without the engine. The F135 powerplant is believed to cost around $15 million; Pratt has said it considers the actual figure proprietary. Industry sources said a unit cost of around $97 million—averaged across all three variants—is in the ballpark of the final cost for a engined F-35 in Lot 18.

“Inflation has skyrocketed,” McIntosh said, noting a sharp increase in the cost of materials needed to build the F-35. Company officials have also cited labor rates and supply chain difficulties as contributing to higher costs.

“I’m really proud that working with our government customers, working with our supply base, we’ve really been able to keep the price of the airplane under that inflation curve,” McIntosh said. The finalized contract is now the “milestone that we’re shooting towards.”

The cost of the F-35 is especially sensitive right now. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has tasked organizations across the Pentagon with identifying eight percent of possible budget cuts that could be used to fund other priorities, and he did not exempt the F-35 from the move. Presidential adviser Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency commission, has criticized the program as obsolete because he believes autonomous combat air vehicles can do the job at less cost.

Trump intervened in the F-35 program in 2017, pressing Lockheed to lower costs and hire more workers. The program was already headed in that direction at the time because production volume was starting to ramp up.

1 Million

Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney separately announced March 3 that the F-35 fleet and its F135 engines, respectively, have attained 1 million hours of operations. The milestone was achieved across all variants of the fighter. The F-35A is a conventional takeoff and landing aircraft; the B model is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings, and the C model is carrier-capable.  

“Reaching one million flight hours is a monumental achievement for the F-35 program,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, program executive officer for the F-35 and head of the JPO. “It highlights the unwavering dedication of our pilots, maintainers, industry partners and our international partners and foreign military sales customers.”

The milestone is a testament to the “F-35’s unmatched capability” and “the resilience and commitment of everyone involved in this program,” Schmidt added. 

Lockheed noted that the 1 million hours includes those flown by the Navy in the F-35C’s first combat missions, against Houthi rebels in Yemen in November 2024, “successfully striking targets in contested airspace.”

The F-35 team is “now focused on the next 1 million hours to be flown by the growing global fleet of more than 1,100 jets, ensuring the F-35 maintains its air superiority role and remains the cornerstone of air dominance as it works in tandem with other 4th, 5th and next-gen platforms,” Lockheed said in a press release. “This includes the capability to control drones, including the U.S. Air Force’s future fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft.”

Pratt, in its own press release, noted that the F135 engine “has powered the F-35 since its first flight in 2006. Achieving this milestone in under two decades is a testament to the engine’s performance and reliability.” Pratt noted that more than 1,300 F135 production engines have been delivered, and “it has an unmatched safety record.”

Pratt received a $1.4 billion contract last fall for the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU), which will improve the F135 to provide additional power and electricity required for the F-35 Block 4 upgrade.

In achieving the million-hour milestone, “the F135 has established itself as the safest, most capable and reliable fighter engine, delivering superior performance and advanced low-observable technologies for the fifth-generation fighter,” Pratt said in a release.

“Accomplishing this milestone in under two decades demonstrates how critical the F-35 remains and highlights Pratt & Whitney’s commitment to our customer and the warfighter,” said Jill Albertelli, Pratt’s president of military engines.

Twenty countries have either bought or are set to buy the F-35. Some 2,900 pilots have been trained to fly the fighter worldwide.

Allvin’s Case for ‘More Air Force’: His Answer to New Administration’s Priorities

Allvin’s Case for ‘More Air Force’: His Answer to New Administration’s Priorities

March 3, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—Chief of Staff Gen. David. W. Allvin made a forceful case for investing in the Air Force as a key to rebuilding the U.S. military and restoring U.S. military deterrence, principal objectives for the Trump administration and new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, Allvin praised Airmen’s ability to keep the force ready despite rising costs for maintaining its aging fleet, now more than 32 years old on average. But he said the Air Force has the answers to those needs in the works even as Airmen achieve miracles with a force in need of overhaul.

“America needs more Air Force,” Allvin said. But “more Air Force doesn’t just mean more of the same.”

Allvin said Airmen are getting too too few flying hours and the Air Force is overburdened by excess infrastructure, having cut 60 percent of its squadrons and 40 percent of its Airmen since the end of the Cold War, but only 15 percent of its bases. One answer is to shed unneeded bases and reinvest the funds needed to maintain them in aircraft and weapons modernization, such as new autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft that can operate in concert with manned jets to confound enemies.

Air Force graphic

Hegseth has vowed to undertake a comprehensive “budget relook” that opens the door to potential funding shifts across the Pentagon. Allvin wants to show that his priorities are more flexible and effective answers to the department’s needs.

“I’m not just sitting here saying, ‘Give me more. Give me more. Give me more.’ More Air Force means more ‘tooth to tail,’” Allvin said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine ahead of his keynote address. “More Air Force means more of what the nation needs to meet the priorities the president has said, and the secretary has said … reestablish deterrence and protecting our homeland.”

In his speech, Allvin laid out in blunt terms the long-held concerns experts have voiced that the Air Force and its resources are stretched too thin for many of its missions. Allvin said the Air Force coped in the past by cutting maintenance, parts, and flying hours, but that now it can no longer afford those expediencies. Sustainment costs keep rising, as aircraft age, and overall mission capable rates are declining.

Allvin presented statistics showing the average age of the fleet rising from 17.2 years in 1994 to 31.7 in 2024. At the same time, aircraft availability rates dropped from 72.9 percent 53.9 percent. Maintenance requirements, meanwhile, are rising: The number of “maintenance actions” per flying hour have nearly doubled to 3.4 per flying hour, up from 1.8 in 1997.

“It’s not surprising. They’re older. It’s more complicated to keep them around,” Allvin said. “We’ve been less than successful in having the ability to modernize on the path that we’d like.”

That means the man-hours requirements per flying hour have roughly doubled since the mid-1990s. Pilots have experienced the impact. The last time the Air Force executed its stated requirement for total flying hours was 2017.

“If airplanes are more flyable, you get more flying hours. You get more flying hours, you get more readiness,” Allvin said. “If you can’t fly, you get less flying hours. This is not sustainable.”

The future of the Air Force will be determined as part of a broader overhaul of Pentagon spending. Hegseth has instructed all the military services to identify an 8 percent cut to their budgets so that those funds can be reallocated in line with the Trump administration’s priorities, including the Golden Dome homeland missile defense project, nuclear modernization, and emerging technologies, which could include autonomous systems.

That reallocation could provide an opportunity to expand the Air Force if some of those repurposed funds are channeled to the service, and Allvin said the Air Force is in a good position to appeal for more force structure and stepped-up funding.

As evidence, Allvin said the Air Force is well positioned to address some of the administration’s key priorities: homeland defense, nuclear deterrence, traditional deterrence, and, if necessary, conflict. Some of the specific priorities the administration has identified, specifically nuclear modernization and semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft, are already integral to the Air Force.

“If we’re in this dangerous and dynamic time, I want to give the president as many options as we possibly can,” Allvin said. “So that means yes, keep on the modernization. Yes, NGAD. Yes, CCA. … That’s what it is going to take.”

The Air Force can also meet many of the requirements for homeland defense. It accounts for two-thirds of the nuclear triad, and three-fourths of nuclear command and control.

“I think we need more options for the president, and that’s what airpower provides,” Allvin said in the keynote. “Everything from rapid response to decisive victory.”

Airpower is particularly well-suited to deliver those options, Allvin claimed.

“That’s what airpower anytime, anywhere means. It’s a promise we have to uphold,” Allvin said. “We have to sustain and maintain the ability to go anytime, anywhere in the most dense threat environment, and be able to put a warhead on a forehead anywhere the president might want.”

“When you’ve got a bad guy considering doing bad actions, the Air Force is the most responsive,” Allvin continued, likening the service to an adept boxer. “We’ve got the ability to pop the jab that might give a shot in the face, and they may think, maybe I might want to rethink my position. … We’re re-establishing deterrence, yes. But if not, we’re already back in the fighting stance. And you know what? We haven’t committed hundreds of thousands of forces over there getting entangled in something that may take us years to get out of and loss of blood and treasure. … And if that didn’t convince him, we’ve got the freaking haymaker. So we can take it across the entire spectrum.”

A larger Air Force, however, is not assured, especially if the Trump administration opts to reallocate money to other priorities.

In an interview, Allvin declined to say which missions or cuts are currently under consideration, noting that the possibilities are “pre-decisional” and ultimately up to the administration.

“I don’t fear this particular exercise that we’re going through,” Allvin said, referring to Hegseth’s instruction to identify 8 percent in cuts. “It will help us drive hard decisions that will give clear decisions going forward.”

But cutting the Air Force budget further would have far-reaching effects; the Air Force is in the midst of modernizing two-thirds of the nuclear triad, and desperate to recapitalize its various aircraft fleets. The cost of the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, the B–21 Raider stealth bomber, and next-generation command and control system known as NC3, all of which are exempt from the cuts, add pressure to justifying other programs.

“With an 8 percent cut, you cannot say, take a percentage of this and take a percentage of this,” Allvin said. “We’re talking about mission sets that we can’t do anymore. We can’t say we’re going to cut 8 percent and still try and do everything we’re doing, we’ll just do it a little bit more on the cheap. We have reached that baseline [already]. So there will be hard decisions on what the nation wants the Air Force to stop doing in order for the Air Force to start doing more things.”

Those decisions will be made above Allvin’s paygrade.

“Because of the changing character of war, which privileges the things that the Air Force has to offer—in speed and tempo, agility and resilience, lethality, the responsiveness of airpower—my sense is that the Air Force will fare well,” he said in an interview. “I will advocate for that, and then those decisions will be made, and then I will organize, train, and equip that Air Force to be the best part of the winning team going forward.”

Allvin said he is optimistic for the Air Force’s future, praising the progress made on two new CCA jets, General Atomics’ YFQ–42A and Andruil Industries’ YFQ–44A. Developed in just a couple of years, the new unmanned fighters match Hegseth’s drive to field new technologies quickly and enable non-traditional suppliers to gain a foothold in Pentagon programs. Both are longstanding but elusive goals of previous Pentagon chiefs.

Allvin walked the stage and spoke without a written script, advancing his slides himself as he spoke. But before launching into his planned talk, he went off script to comment on a quote that Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman had used in his opening keynote. The quote came from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech, officially titled “Citizenship in a Republic,” a copy of which hangs on the wall of Allvin’s Pentagon office.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better,” Roosevelt says. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds…”

Standing on the middle of the stage, alone under the spotlights, he urged his Airmen forward: “I would tell you that now is the time for daring greatly,” Allvin said. “And for anyone who wants to come into the arena, come on in, the water’s fine.”

‘Whatever it Takes’: Saltzman Says ‘Space Superiority’ Is USSF’s Mission

‘Whatever it Takes’: Saltzman Says ‘Space Superiority’ Is USSF’s Mission

March 3, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force “will do whatever it takes” to control the space domain, including destroying adversaries’ satellites when and if necessary, vowed Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman in a keynote address kicking off the AFA Warfare Symposium. 

“Space superiority is our prime imperative,” Saltzman declared, “and we do not yet have the service we need.” 

In perhaps the most direct message yet from a senior leader on offensive capability in space, Saltzman said March 3 that the Pentagon is pressing forward with offensive space operations and capabilities, a sea change after years of reluctance to discuss the topic publicly. 

Saltzman used the term “space superiority” more than a dozen times in his 26-minute talk, hammering home the role of the Space Force as a warfighting service while warning that more change and resources are needed to fulfill that role.

Citing his six “core truths” about space and warfighting, Saltzman defined space superiority as being able to defend U.S. and allied assets in orbit and at the same time protect U.S. forces in all other domains from space-enabled attack—and the Space Force must be ready and able to do so with force if necessary. 

“Space superiority is the fundamental difference between a civil space agency and a warfighting space service,” he said. “It is the distinction between a company’s employees operating commercial satellites and Guardians conducting combat operations to achieve joint objectives.” 

Saltzman reiterated his oft-expressed view that the Space Force must not be seen as merely an enabler of the other services, but that it must be a warfighting service that controls its domain through a range of capabilities. 

“Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain, employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities by disruptions and degradation—even destruction if necessary,” he said. “It includes things like orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare. Its counter-space operations can be employed for both offensive and defensive purposes, at the direction of the combatant commands.” 

Analysts and academics have noted the need for offensive space weapons and senior Space Force leaders have been more willing to comment on the topic in the recent past. Saltzman has referred to “responsible counter-space campaigning,” for example, while U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen N. Whiting has said “space fires” is among his top priorities. 

But hesitations about openly discussing offensive space persist among Space Force personnel who grew up believing long-lasting, destructive actions in space—which produce clouds of orbiting debris—are the actions of reckless rogue states rather than responsible nations. 

Saltzman acknowledged those concerns in a media roundtable after his speech. The destruction left behind after land, air, or sea battles doesn’t continue to move at 17,000 miles per hour as it will in space, he said. Yet there can be times when destruction in space could be warranted, he said.  

“I am far more enamored by systems that deny, disrupt, degrade. I think there’s a lot of room to leverage systems focused on those ‘D’ words, if you will,” he said. “The destroy word comes at a cost in terms of debris, if you think about space, and so we may get pushed into the corner where we need to execute some of those options. But I’m really focused on weapons that deny, disrupt, degrade. Those can have tremendous mission impacts with far less degradation than a way that could affect blue systems.” (Blue systems refer to friendly forces in military exercises, while red systems refer to adversaries.)

In the past, Saltzman has classified counter-space capabilities is either on orbit or terrestrial represented by these categories:  

  • Kinetic, destructive weapons
  • Directed energy weapons
  • Radio frequency energy and jamming systems

China is pursuing all of these, while the U.S. is not, he told reporters, but he did not specify which capabilities the Space Force doesn’t have. 

Asked if he would like to have all six kinds of weapons at his disposal for space control and superiority, Saltzman said his “personal preference about it doesn’t matter,” but hinted that it could be beneficial. 

“The mix of weapons based on the targets is always a military consideration, and when I look at the space-enabled targeting architecture that [China] has built, it’s pretty impressive,” he said. “It’s in all orbital regimes. It’s in the hundreds of satellites. And to give the president options requires a mix of systems to be able to go across the full spectrum of operations to all orbital regimes. There are some things that are purpose-built for low-Earth orbit effects, others in GEO. And so the more weapons in the mix we have, the more options we can offer.” 

Many of those weapons, if they exist, remain classified, and Saltzman admitted to being “cagey” when asked what the Space Force does and doesn’t have. He was not cagey, however, about the need for space superiority—and for the Space Force to be able to achieve it. 

“We need to conduct day-to-day operations while we prepare for the high-end fight,” he said from the podium. “Everything we’re doing, every new initiative, every project, every task, is designed to get us what we need, where we need to go while threading that needle.”

Among those initiatives, Saltzman highlighted the service’s new Mission Deltas, Officer Training Course, Operational Test and Training Infrastructure, component commands, and Space Futures Command. It’s a sizable list, he acknowledged, and one that is putting a “heavy strain” on Guardians. But the efforts are critical. 

“Other senior leaders will say, ‘Hey, the Space Force has so many things going on. We need to catch our breath. Why can’t we just slow down, wait a while, consolidate some of our gains?’” Saltzman said. “And I really do wish it was that easy. … But the answer is, the Space Force we have is still not the Space Force we need.”