Air Force Plans to Divest 250 Aircraft in 2025, Shrinking Fleet to New Low

March 11, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force plans to shrink its total aircraft inventory in fiscal 2025, cutting its plans for new airframes while continuing to retire old platforms, the service revealed in its budget request, released on March 11. The Air Force plans to divest 250 aircraft in FY25, dropping its total aircraft inventory below 5,000, an unprecedentedly small number.

“We’re protecting the current force’s capabilities at what we think is an acceptable level of risk,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told reporters ahead of the budget’s official release.

The 2025 budget predicts a total aircraft inventory of 4,903 aircraft, according to a service accounting of total aircraft inventory.

Fiscal Year 2025 Divestments

Aircraft	Number of Airframes
F-22	32
HH-60G	12
F-15C/D	65
A-10	56
F-15E	26
F-16C/D	11
C-130H	6
EC-130H	1
CV-22	2
E-11	1
KC-135	16
T-1	22
TOTAL	250

The Air Force is heavily focused on modernization, so protecting research and development comes at the cost of new aircraft purchases in the latest budget, according to top service officials. The aircraft divestment plan is worth over $2 billion in savings, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for budget Maj. Gen. Mike A. Greiner said.

“For the most part, our divestments were planned because we need to start moving the funding into the modernization programs,” Kristyn E. Jones, the acting undersecretary of the Air Force told reporters March 11.

The Air Force wants to purchase 42 F-35As and 18 F-15EXs—a total of 60 new fighters. That will not meet the service’s stated long-term goal of at least 72 new fighters annually. The Air Force is moving towards awarding the first contracts for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), semi-autonomous aircraft that will accompany the manned fighter fleet. CCAs will “rethink our definition” of the USAF fighter fleet, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said on March 7.

Fiscal Year 2025 Procurements

Aircraft	Number of Airframes
F-35A	42
F-15EX	18
KC-46	15
MH-139	8
T-7A	7
C-40	1
TOTAL	91

“The numbers are going down in the near term,” said Jones. However, she said CCAs could change that calculus in the long term. “We are ramping that program up as much as we can—if we have [fiscal] ’24 appropriation, even faster—to try to get that affordable mass capability to mainly offset those divestments of our old fleet,” she said.

Jones said on March 11 that the decrease in the planned F-35 buy was due to budgetary constraints and delays in the fighter’s planned F-35 Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3), a significant but lagging software upgrade. However, the change does not mean the service is less committed to the F-35 in the long term, she said.

“Given the fiscal constraints this year, as well as the delays in getting the capabilities that we need, we re-phased the program, but we haven’t cut off the total numbers,” Jones said.

The service is seeking to ditch 65 aging F-15C/Ds, some of which are barely airworthy, and divest 56 A-10 Warthog aircraft, which the USAF wants to retire from the force entirely by 2029. The service also wants to get rid of 26 F-15E Strike Eagles with less powerful Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-220 engines but upgrade the portion of the fleet with more powerful engines with the Eagle Passive Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS), which provides “an advanced digital electronic warfare system capable of defeating modern threat systems in contested airspace,” the service’s budget documents state.

Some of the Air Force’s retirement plans are controversial: leaders are once more trying to retire 32 of their oldest F-22s, which they argue are no longer viable in combat. Instead, they want to fund “investments in F-22 sensor enhancements to more closely track and stay ahead of potential adversaries,” according to the Department of the Air Force’s budget request.

“Block 20 airframes lack many of the enhanced capabilities of the Block 30/35 jets,” an Air Force spokesperson said of the rationale. “Upgrading them to Block 30/35 is not feasible due to cost and time constraints.”

Congress has long balked at the prospect of retiring any models of what many see as the world’s best air superiority fighter and passed legislation prohibiting any such retirements until fiscal 2028. However, the Air Force has held firm in its desire to retire the old Block 20 aircraft—reducing the F-22 fleet from 185 to 153 aircraft—for several years.

“We’ll comply with the law, obviously, but we’re putting those F-22s back on the table in order to fit in the other things we think are higher priority,” Kendall said

That includes the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform, the replacement for the F-22, service officials say.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Casillas, 325th Maintenance Squadron crew chief, conducts pre-flight procedures prior to launching an F-22 Raptor at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, March 29, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Tiffany Del Oso

The F-15EX, a modernized version of the venerable fourth-generation fighter, has been in a state of flux for several years now. The service initially planned to purchase 144 as an advanced fourth-generation replacement for the old F-15C/Ds. But now the service says it will buy 18 more in 2025 then end production, capping the fleet at 98.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act, a 2023 law that capped the defense budget at a 1 percent rise, limited the service’s resources. The Department of Defense is also enacting a 4.5 percent pay raise for service members and a 2 percent pay raise for civilians, in addition to other benefits increases.

“We’re modernizing to the extent we can under the caps as the Federal Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Kendall said. “We’ve made some adjustments in procurement and we’re going to fund some additional modernization, research, and development, so that’s the overarching picture.”

A low-rate initial production of seven T-7A Red Hawk trainers is funded, which will help alleviate the aging T-38 fleet, which has been increasingly hard to maintain to keep training flying hours up, though the T-7 has faced significant delays. The Air Force also plans to procure 15 KC-46 Pegasus tankers to replace 16 1950s-era KC-135s it plans to divest in 2025. The service continues to move forward with its long-term plan to bring in the Next Generation Aerial Refueling System (NGAS), with investments in the program office to develop the future tanker. “We will work to define and finalize an acquisition strategy this year,” for NGAS, Greiner told reporters.

After Recruiting Shortfall, USAF Cuts End Strength Goal, Boosts Bonus Funds in ’25

March 11, 2024 | By David Roza

The Air Force is trimming its end strength goal by 8,000 Airmen in fiscal year 2025 after the service could not meet its previous recruiting goals, while upping the Space Force by 400 Guardians, according to budget documents released March 11.

The budget proposal would cut the end strengths from last year’s request by:

4,700 Airmen from the Active-Duty Air Force, to an end strength of 320,000

700 Airmen from the Air National Guard for an end strength of 107,700

2,600 Airmen from the Air Force Reserves for an end strength of 67,000.

Meanwhile, the Space Force would increase by 400 Guardians to an end strength of 9,800. The 400 additional Guardians are “largely driven by inter-service transfers,” according to budget documents.

According to budget documents, the shrinking end strength “is driven by a net reduction in legacy force structure requirements along with an increase in future force structure requirements.” Specifically, the Air Force seeks to retire sizable numbers of A-10 attack jets, F-15, F-16, and F-22 fighters, and KC-135 refueling tankers. But an Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine the drop has more to do with recent recruiting challenges.

The fiscal 2024 budget request called for 324,700 Active-Duty Airmen, 108,400 Air National Guardsmen, and 69,600 Air Force Reservists. But as the service struggled to attract new Airmen and failed to reach those numbers, Congress responded by trimming the authorized end strengths in its 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, closer to where the service actually was.

“The FY25 end strength funding request will provide funding for the number of Airmen we realistically believe we can bring into the Air Force this year,” Maj. Kaitlin Holmes said.

The Air Force’s overall military personnel (MILPERS) request for fiscal 2025 will go up roughly 2 percent, to $41.7 billion. The Space Force MILPERS request is about $1.2 billion, roughly $49 million more than last year’s request.

One notable part of that MILPERS account is the request for $1.1 billion in Air Force bonuses and retention programs for 118,000 critical positions. Both figures are major increases over last year’s request, when the service sought $648 million for 65,000 critical positions.

The $1.1 billion includes $327 million for aviation and $21 million for cyber retention programs. It also funds $91 million in initial enlistment recruitment bonuses and $10 million in enlisted college loan repayment program, which brought in more than 200 new Airmen from March to September last year.

On the Space Force side, the budget would fund $25 million in selective retention bonuses and initial enlistment bonus, plus another $5.7 million for assignment incentive pay. All of those numbers are marked increases over the 2024 request.

The MILPERS budgets also have proposed raises of 4.5 percent for pay, 4.2 percent for Basic Allowance for Housing, and 3.4 percent for Basic Allowance for Subsistence. Such increases would mark smaller jumps than the previous few years, when inflation led to historic jumps in pay, BAH, and BAS. More recently, inflation has cooled somewhat. In June, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that inflation in the personal consumption expenditures price index would fall from 3.3 percent in 2023 to 2.6 percent in 2024, and 2.2 percent in 2025.

The MILPERS budget increases also include an additional $40 million for the Basic Needs Allowance, targeted toward junior troops struggling with food insecurity. The increase will allow officials to expand eligibility for the program, to troops with income that is 200 percent or less of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, compared to the prior cutoff of 150 percent.

Department of the Air Force documents say the budget “prioritizes $1.3 billion to support our greatest asset, our people, through increased pay and benefits,” but it could come at a cost if the government cannot pass a full budget by April 30—a failure to do so would trigger automatic cuts under the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“We will continue to take care of our people by ensuring military manpower accounts are protected from further reductions under sequestration, but this will exert tremendous pressure on procurement and readiness accounts to absorb the indiscriminate, across-the-board spending cut required under sequestration,” the Department of Defense wrote in its overall budget summary.

Indeed, MILPERS accounts for about 22 percent of the Air Force’s budget in FY24 and FY25, much of which is driven by pay raises mandated by Congress. Even so, the Air Force sometimes comes up short, as it did last summer when inflation, higher-than-expected PCS costs, and retention resulted in the service running out of funding for bonuses and PCS moves, leaving many Airmen and their families in limbo.

“This is a crippling problem,” researchers with the RAND Corporation wrote in a 2023 report. “The workforce is the foundation for readiness, yet the [Department of the Air Force] … must maintain fiscal flexibility to meet other immediate and future needs.”

Better data on the impact of past bonuses and incentive pays, better integration between Air Force policy planners, and “whole of Air Force” policy games for department officials could result in more efficient policies that are less likely to result in a shortfall, RAND senior operations researcher and retired Air Force veteran Lisa Harrington told Air & Space Forces Magazine in January.

“In our reports, we call for bringing those people responsible for human capital policies together to talk about this in one big group, because there are second order effects across all of these policy changes,” she said.

Air Force Gets Bigger Slice of Budget than Army for First Time in Decades

March 11, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force would get a bigger budget than the Army in fiscal 2025, a marked shift as the Pentagon invests to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.

President Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget request released March 11 seeks $188.1 billion for the Air Force, $2.3 billion more than the $185.8 billion it seeks for the Army. The White House is seeking $203.9 billion for the Navy, the most among the military services.

Service	2025 Budget Request (in Billions)
Navy	$203.9
Air Force	$188.1
Army	$185.8
Marine Corps	$53.7
Space Force	$29.4

DOD Budget

The overall topline for the Department of the Air Force would be $262.6 billion, the most among the military departments. But that figure includes $45.1 billion the department will never see; this so-called “pass-through”—funds classified programs primarily in the intelligence community. The pass-through dwarfs the total $29.4 billion sought to fund the entire Space Force in fiscal 2025.

Discounting those pass-through funds, the Air Force received less money than the Navy and Army for the past 32 years, according to the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. If approved, fiscal 2025 would mark the 33rd consecutive year the nation spent more on its Navy than its Air Force.

Both the 2018 and 2022 National Defense Strategies focused on countering China’s growth as a military threat; the 2022 document dubbed China the “pacing threat,” and each of the services has been working to adapt its forces and posture to match that strategy. The Air Force, Space Force, Navy, and Marine Corps all have outsized roles in countering China.

Army leaders continue to argue their service has a crucial role in any potential fight with China, but their slice of the budget has been in a slow decline for several years as the nation has tilted its attention from counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq to deterring peer conflict in the Pacific. As recently as the 2022 budget request, the Pentagon’s sought $172.9 billion for the Army compared to $156.3 billion for the Air Force; the gap has only narrowed since then.

Yet the Air Force faces a mounting numbers crunch in the years ahead. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin both made clear in the days leading up to the budget release that the numbers aren’t what they’d like. But both also indicated the squeeze on the service’s future will only grow as it seeks to modernize in the years ahead.

Modernization plans include the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, perhaps the single biggest modernization program in military history comprising the entire ground leg of the nuclear triad; the stealthy new B-21 bomber; the T-7A trainer; continued purchases of the KC-46 tanker to enable long-range strike operations in the Pacific; uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft to complement the manned fighter fleet, ongoing purchases of the F-35A as older F-15s and A-10s are divested, and the coming Next-Generation Air Dominance family of aircraft are all moving into procurement at the same time.

“’25, while difficult, is at a level that we can accept,” Kendall said March 7 at the McAleese defense programs conference. “[But] we see very big problems for ’26. We’re looking at a number of things.”

To fund everything the Air Force has in store could add $10 billion or more to the budget at a time when Congress has shown a disinclination toward growing defense spending. Some Air Force advocates have argue that the pass-through makes their case harder, because it effectively inflates the budget by more than 20 percent. But while some lawmakers have tried to legislate the pass-through out of the Air Force budget, others have shot down such plans.

Meanwhile, the pass-through is only getting larger. The fiscal 2025 request includes $45.1 billion in pass-through funding, up 2 percent over last year’s request. Indeed, pass-through growth is outpacing the Air Force (up 1.6 percent), not to mention the Space Force, which saw its budget request decline by 2 percent.

Service/Component	2024 Request	2025 Request	Change
Air Force	$185.1	$188.1	1.62%
Space Force	$30.0	$29.4	-2.00%
Pass-Through	$44.2	$45.1	2.04%

DOD Budget

Kendall said he could accept that this year because some funding in the pass-through does help answer Space Force requirements.

“We’re working very closely with the intelligence community, particularly with NRO,” he said, referring to the National Reconnaissance Office. “And there are dual-use capabilities that can be fielded in space that are valuable both for intelligence and military applications. And that’s why I’m saying that some of the things that are in the pass-through are beneficial to the Space Force.”

Kendall declined to elaborate, however, on whether the Space Force’s budget reduction was directly related to the pass-through increase. He indicated some of that cut was due to fewer launches, because the Space Force has fewer launches planned in the fiscal 2025 timeframe.

“The net effect of the constraints that we have are that we’re not moving forward as fast as I’d like to in space,” Kendall said. “But we’re still moving forward…. Again, I’d like to be able to move faster, but you know, we do have constraints.”

Those constraints impose reductions in planned fighter aircraft and continued divestment of older aircraft, both of which will be hard sells in Congress. But unless Congress adds funds to pay for those, the pressure on other programs, both for people and systems, will continue to mount.

Air Force, Space Force Leaders Warn of ‘Unsatisfying’ 2025 Budget

March 9, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Ahead of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2025 budget rollout March 11, Department of the Air Force leaders warned of a “unsatisfying,” “difficult,” and “resource-constrained” request that had to be adjusted due to spending caps—with particular concern for the still-growing Space Force.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, senior acquisition executive Andrew P. Hunter, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein all spoke at the annual McAleese defense programs conference on March 7, and while none laid out specific numbers ahead of the budget request rollout, each acknowledged that the Air Force and Space Force did not get all they wanted or needed.

“We were limited by the Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Kendall said, referring to legislation passed last summer that capped discretionary spending across the board for fiscal 2025 and 2026. “There was not an opportunity, as we went through building our budget for 2025, for us to really do large tradeoffs and aspire for additional money. We had a zero-sum game. And so it was constrained. It was not to the level that we had anticipated might be possible for us to budget to the year before.”

Both Kendall and Hunter noted that the spending caps’ impact had to be mostly absorbed by readiness and modernization accounts, forcing leaders to make difficult decisions about what programs to prioritize and whether to lean more heavily toward future capabilities or current operations.

But those choices were particularly rough for the newer of the department’s two services.

“There’s virtually no opportunity to make that tradeoff in the Space Force,” Kendall said. “The Space Force is about 65 percent R&D. There just really wasn’t anything you could trade off to protect the R&D.”

Guetlein also referenced the Space Force’s reliance on research money when discussing the ongoing struggle in Congress to pass a fiscal 2024 budget—the service requested a 15 percent budget increase for 2024 but still hasn’t seen those additional funds.

The 2025 budget seems highly unlikely to feature a similar increase. Acting Air Force undersecretary Kristyn E. Jones warned as much last month, and Guetlein noted in his remarks that “space is huge, and the Space Force is resource constrained.”

“We must ensure we are properly resourcing the Space Force for competitive endurance to ensure we can guarantee space superiority well into the future,” he later added. “Today’s Space Force is a bargain. But tomorrow’s Space Force requires a ruthless prioritization of resources to ensure we can continue to enjoy the freedom of action and space that we’ve all come to depend on.”

Guetlein’s urgency to resource the Space Force was echoed by Kendall, who warned that the young service finds itself in a precarious position after its first few years of growth.

“I am more worried about the Space Force right now than I am about the Air Force,” he said. “The Air Force has a large installed base, it’s got a lot of existing capital investment. It’s got a lot that it can capitalize on. I know that [Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance] Saltzman talks about this a lot … we’re a nation that had a merchant marine and woke up one day and realized it needed a Navy. That’s the situation the Space Force is in.

“And so we’ve got to transform our space capabilities from peacetime capabilities for a benign space environment to warfighting capabilities. We’ve got to do that both for the services that the Space Force provides to the joint force, and we’ve also got to protect the joint force from the other side’s space assets which are proliferating. We’ve got a big problem there, and of the two services right now, the one I’m more worried about within the Department of Air Force is the Space Force.”

Yet the Air Force is not in the clear either. Allvin noted in his address that the budget submission “will likely be unsatisfying to all, including us.” While the service’s priorities for modernization haven’t changed, he added, their plan to achieve them has been stymied in some ways.

“Our wonderful plan that we’re getting ready to resource, there are cost increases, macroeconomic factors, there are world actors that aren’t behaving and aren’t letting us proceed a pace with the plan that we had to modernize our Air Force and move forward into the future,” he said.

Kendall: F-35 Delivery Hold Is ‘Hurting’ the Air Force

March 8, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The continuing hold on F-35 deliveries, pending completion of the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade testing, is having an operational and financial impact on the Air Force, Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters March 7.

“It’s hurting already,” Kendall said during a briefing after the McAleese defense conference in Washington, D.C.

“We really need the TR-3 hardware and the Block 4 set of upgrades … to stay competitive,” Kendall said. “And we’re going to need them in quantity, so getting on with that is really important to us.”

The delay in acceptance “affects cost,” he added.

The government stopped accepting new F-35s from Lockheed Martin last fall, since new aircraft were being manufactured with the TR-3 hardware and software but the upgrade is still in testing. Both the Joint Program Office and Lockheed have officially forecast that testing will be completed—and the flow of new jets can resume—by mid-2024, although Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet told reporters in January that “late summer may be a more likely scenario” for TR-3 acceptance.

“Where we expected to replace airplanes, we now are not. So, we’ve got to carry the existing aircraft, generally speaking, for longer than we had planned,” Kendall said. That results in additional, unplanned costs for maintenance, spare parts, training, and more, although he noted that “I don’t know that I’m seeing a lot of financial impact of the delay yet.”

However, “the operational capability impact is significant,” he said. Of the 70 or so aircraft that are completed but not delivered, sources said more than 30 are F-35A models destined for U.S. Air Force units. They will replace aircraft in units that now fly the A-10 and the F-16, and the delay has disrupted training and assignments for both pilots and ground crews that will transition from those aircraft to the F-35.

The F-35 delivery hold affects not only the U.S. services but international users as well, and the program partners have discussed accepting jets with less than the full TR-3 capability—a so-called “truncated” configuration—in order to get deliveries moving again.

The F-35 Joint Program Office said in January that this plan “to accept aircraft ahead of full validation” of TR-3 capabilities is “focused on delivering capable aircraft to the warfighters,” but offered no timetable regarding when this might happen.

Asked if the Air Force would accept jets with less than the full TR-3 capability, Kendall said, “We had some debates about that.”

However, Kendall had to recuse himself from those discussions because of his previous business relationship with Northrop Grumman, the maker of the AN/APG-85 radar that will equip the Block 4 version of the F-35.

“I deferred to Gen. [Charles Q. Brown, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] on that and he made the call. It’s a judgment call,” Kendall said. “In general, I want to hold industry responsible for delivering what they promised. And so my bias, if there is one, is to not accept products” that are not as promised, he said.

“But there’s an operational argument to be made,” he added, given that the preferred outcome is “a better capability” than the services now have. The TR-3 is a step up from the TR-2 versions which were the last to be delivered.

Lockheed executive vice president for aeronautics Greg Ulmer, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in February that testing of TR-3 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., is showing “improved performance with the TR-3,” with improved software stability and “significant” new weapons capability.

He said production TR-3 software had at that time been flying at the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, plant and racked up “20 production flights.” Although he could not say with certainty when TR-3 testing will be complete, he said his belief was that it would happen in summer 2024.

As to a release with less than the full TR-3 capability, he said Lockheed is working with the JPO “to define what the deliverable key release will be, but I’m not going to get into specifics. … That’s for the JPO to decide and we’ll align to that requirement.”

As Bass Bids Farewell, New CMSAF Flosi Urges Airmen To ‘Make Every Day Count’

March 8, 2024 | By David Roza

On his first day as the new top enlisted Airman, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Flosi urged his colleagues not to waste a moment as the Air Force makes sweeping changes to prepare for a possible conflict with China or Russia.

“I’m committed to ensuring our Air Force is prepared to meet these challenges head-on,” Flosi said at a change of responsibility ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on March 8. “Every day matters, and we must make every day count.”

The ceremony marked the retirement for Flosi’s predecessor, former CMSAF JoAnne Bass, who made history as the first woman to serve as highest senior enlisted member of a U.S. military branch, and the first person of Asian-American descent to become Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. The ceremony took place exactly 31 years after Bass first joined the Air Force in 1993.

“I said this several years ago at the change of responsibility ceremony, and it still holds true today: without a doubt, Chief Master Sergeant Jo Bass was the right chief,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who hired Bass as CMSAF in 2020 when he was Air Force Chief of Staff.

“She blended vast experience, expertise, empathy, an impeccable moral character, and a resolute will to succeed,” said the general, who was the first Black service chief in U.S. military history.

“Jo, I’m so glad I hired you,” he added later. “You’ve been an inspiration to me. We were able to break barriers together. You’ve been an inspiration to our Air Force, you’ve been an inspiration to our nation.”

cmsaf bass — Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass receives a brief from the 334th Training Squadron at the Levitow Training Support Facility on Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, Dec. 19, 2023 (U.S. Air Force photos by Senior Airman Trenten Walters)

Bass’ accomplishments as CMSAF include creating the service’s first ever Enlisted Force Development Action Plan, reforming the dress and appearance standards to encourage more diversity in the Air Force, rolling out a Spectrum of Resilience to navigate mental and physical health resources, and helping establish Fortify the Force, a volunteer group for improving quality of life in the Air Force and Space Force.

Beyond those efforts, Bass helped revamp professional military education for enlisted Airmen and published three guides meant to help Airmen of all ranks understand the Air Force and the wider joint force. The updated “Brown Book” is about the enlisted force structure and how Airmen can prepare for an Air Force career. The updated “Blue Book” is about the service’s institutional values, complete with updates on combating sexual harassment, assault, discrimination, and bullying. The new “Purple Book” explains how airpower works in a joint warfighting strategy.

“While we’ve been focused in orienting to our most sophisticated peer and near peer adversaries, we’ve also spent a lot of time focusing on elevating the strategic IQ of our force, by ensuring that every Airman understands what is at stake today and in the future,” Bass said at the ceremony.

CMSAF 19 also advocated for child care as “a readiness issue” and pushed lawmakers to modernize the military’s systems for setting pay and compensation and basic allowance for housing. In her farewell speech, Bass left behind three points for Airmen: be your best: move the ball forward, and take care of one another.

“Every single day we ought to be asking ourselves, ‘Am I my best? Am I moving the ball and am I making a difference? And am I taking care of my fellow wingmen, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, my neighbors?” she said. “I tried to do this every day as your Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. And I ask you to look in the mirror and ask yourself the very same thing.”

Now it’s Flosi’s turn to take up the CMSAF mantle at a time when his new boss, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, wants to rapidly change how the Air Force deploys troops, develops new systems, trains Airmen, and achieves air superiority.

“We’re going to have to break some china if we’re going to break some China,” Allvin said. “Implementation is not going to be an easy thing … I need that teammate who’s going to walk into my office, if I’m heading the wrong direction and maybe a little bit too stubborn in my path and say, ‘I’m hearing some things, we might have a better idea.’”

Flosi is that teammate, the general said.

“He is principled, without being inflexible. This is exactly what we need,” Allvin said. “All of those attributes are there. And so while all the candidates were so compelling, it was a pretty easy pick for me, quite frankly.”

Indeed, Flosi told Air & Space Forces Magazine that one of his most valued traits as a leader is the ability to “seek first to understand.” Bass agreed with Allvin.

“Chief Flosi is absolutely the right leader we need as we continue to transform and re-optimize our force,” she said. “Dave, your experiences within the Air Force enterprise and Air Force Materiel Command is invaluable as we reorient to this new threat. You are a thought leader who discerns and leads with heart.”

It helps that Flosi and Bass share a favorite football team: the Kansas City Chiefs.

“He knows what a winning team is,” she said, “so that’s a good thing.”

How David Flosi Went From a Broke College Student to the New CMSAF

March 8, 2024 | By David Roza

When he was 22 years old, David Flosi was engaged, studying finance, working full time to pay for college, and running out of money. Something had to be done.

“I had a friend who enlisted right out of high school and was coming to the end of his contract, and we went on like a two-hour drive and talked,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “I saw the Air Force as a means to an end: get the GI Bill, finish my degree debt-free, and support a new family.

“That’s why I enlisted,” he added. “It’s not why I stayed.”

Indeed, when Flosi [pronounced ‘flossy’] became the 20th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force at a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on March 8, it was in part thanks to the mentors sitting in the audience who helped him grow into a career Airman with a Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, and 28 years of service to his country.

“I was completely blessed,” he said about the mentors who shaped his path.

With his background studying finance, Flosi thought he would join that career field when he enlisted in 1996, but he wound up in an open mechanical slot and became a nuclear weapons specialist after discussing the options with his then-fiancée, Katy.

“[Explosive ordnance disposal] was what I wanted to do initially and that scared her. Nuclear weapons did not,” he laughed. “So that rose up on the list.”

It was not always easy at first, partly because Flosi did not fully buy into living the Air Force core values 24 hours a day.

“Like most chiefs, I did not walk this completely clean path,” he said. “There were a few moments where maybe I wasn’t as disciplined as I should have been, so I had to grow up a little bit.”

Being held accountable for those moments helped Flosi internalize what it means to be an Airman, but he had a habit of asking questions, as his boss’ boss liked to remind him.

“I asked ‘why’ so much that he started making me pull out my [leave and earnings statement], and he’d look at it and say ‘That’s what I thought Airman Flosi, you ain’t getting no thinking pay,’” he said. “So I grew up in that era. But my immediate supervisor was very patient. He was like ‘All right, come here knucklehead,’ and he would walk me through the why, which I really needed. He figured me out and what I needed to be successful.”

david flosi — Chief Master Sgt. David Flosi, Air Force Sustainment Center commander chief master sergeant, visits with Airmen from the Airman Leadership School at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, Sept. 22, 2020. **U.S. Air Force photo by Cynthia Griggs**

That kind of support helped turn the Air Force from a job into a profession for Flosi. But he had a lot more to learn, especially as a brand-new staff sergeant leading other Airmen for the first time.

“Boy, do I feel bad for that first Senior Airman, because I just smothered this poor guy with all of my new leadership skills,” he recalled. “I learned a lot from that: I learned that leadership isn’t taking the book and dumping it on them. I needed to connect with this person, meet them where they’re at, and hopefully bring them to the right.”

Flosi had another big break when a senior NCO told him about the Air Force Institute of Technology, which offers graduate degree programs for enlisted and commissioned service members and government civilians. Flosi earned a Master’s degree in logistics and supply chain management, a move which he said changed the course of his career.

“I cannot believe I got the opportunity to go to graduate school and get paid to do it,” he said. “That would have never happened if I didn’t have these good leaders in place who actually were trying to take care of me.”

Flosi paid it forward by serving with distinction on deployments in support of Operations Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, Inherent Resolve, and Freedom’s Sentinel. He received the Bronze Star for his work during a tour in Afghanistan, and from 2017 to 2019, he was the command chief master sergeant of “DATA MASKED,” according to his resume, which drew interest on the unofficial Air Force subreddit.

“You can tell them that it was very cool,” he said when asked about the assignment.

Flosi’s latest post was as Command Chief Master Sergeant of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Over the course of his years as command chief of various units, Flosi picked up a few lessons about executing commander’s intent.

“Commanders have statutory authority. Chiefs don’t,” he said. “This is about relationships for us. And so our ability to get things done on behalf of the command, or to implement the guidance and commander’s intent, no matter where you’re at in the organization, is completely dependent on our ability to build relationships with people.”

Flosi’s new boss, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, wants to make a long list of sweeping changes fast in order to prepare the service for a possible conflict with China or Russia. Flosi was involved in the conversations leading to those changes and agrees that speed will be a key factor in the effort.

“We are out of time,” he said. “The department, both the Air and Space Force, are not optimized for great power competition. And we must get there.”

Flosi flagged readiness as an area he particularly looks forward to helping change. Allvin said at the AFA Warfare Symposium that the service has metrics for each squadron’s ability to execute mission essential tasks, but there is no overarching assessment showing how well the service can, for example, re-operate, which means “the fight to get outta town and a fight to get into theater and a fight to get airborne,” Allvin said.

“Only when you have assessments can you really find out the details and put resources against them,” he added.

Quality of life, including pay and compensation, health care, and child care is an underlying part of warfighting readiness, Flosi said.

“It’s a foundational item,” he explained. “Our quality-of-life issues impact all of the other things that we’re trying to do.”

While his predecessor, former Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass, was active on Facebook, Flosi is still working out his social media policy, acknowledging that the vast majority of service members use some form of the technology.

“We’re not going to ignore that,” he said. “We might do it a bit differently.”

One thing that will carry over from CMSAF #19 is a love for the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Though he was born in Florida, Flosi grew up in Kansas City and picked up a knack for barbecue.

“I tell people sometimes I have a smoking problem,” he said. “I’ll smoke vegetables, deviled eggs. It doesn’t have to just be pork.”

That skill set could prove a handy outlet over the next four years, which may be the most challenging of Flosi’s career. Part of a CMSAF’s job is to serve as the personal adviser to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force on the welfare, readiness, and morale of more than 600,000 Airmen across the force.

“I feel the enormity of the responsibility of the job: it’s important to not take for granted the opportunity that’s being presented,” he said. “Therefore I genuinely want to execute to the commander’s intent.”

He has a few guidelines to light the way. Flosi keeps a paper on leadership that he wrote for an assignment at the Senior NCO Academy back in 2011. Listed there are the values he holds dear, including integrity, accountability, direct feedback, transparency, fairness, and “seek first to understand.”

“I am constantly reminded that things are not always as they seem,” he wrote about that last value. “Sharpening this leadership trait sets the framework for trusting relationships focused on personal and professional success.”

Pentagon Clears V-22 to Start Flying Again After Three-Month Grounding

March 8, 2024 | By Greg Hadley and Chris Gordon

Naval Air Systems Command lifted the grounding order on its V-22 Osprey fleet on March 8, and Air Force Special Operations Command announced it would take a phased approach to get its CV-22 variant of the tiltrotor aircraft flying again after a three-month pause in operations.

AFSOC grounded its Ospreys Dec. 6 following a deadly November crash off the coast of Japan in which eight Airmen died. Naval Air Systems Command then grounded all of the Pentagon’s V-22s, rendering the military’s entire fleet of 400-plus tilt-rotor aircraft unusable.

In a statement, NAVAIR said senior Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps leaders coordinated to craft “risk mitigation controls to assist with safely returning the V-22 to flight operations.”

In its own statement, AFSOC outlined a three-step approach to getting its CV-22s back in the air and its crews fully qualified and comfortable flying again:

Phase 1: “Ground and simulator training integrating planned flight controls, safety briefings, a review of maintenance records and refining by-squadron training plans to implement the new safety protocols.”

Phase 2: A “multi-month program” for aircrews and maintainers to regain proficiency and mission currency, with maintainers in particular getting training on the new safety protocols implemented by NAVAIR. “Each squadron will progress through this phase at different speeds based a variety of factors including maintenance requirements for aircraft, experience level of personnel in the squadron and weather impact to flight schedules,” the AFSOC statement read.

Phase 3: A return to full operations, including exercises and deployments.

Neither NAVAIR nor AFSOC specified in their statements the findings of the investigation into the November crash, the deadliest Air Force flying mishap since 2018, but said they are taking new safety protocols.

“Some of the mitigation and controls put in place are focused on maintenance actions including increased inspections—on a more frequent basis than previously—as well as new procedures when responding to standard and emergency situations that arise in flight,” an AFSOC spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters on March 8 that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III believes the Osprey is safe to fly.

“The Secretary is confident in the steps that have been taken to return it to flight,” Ryder said. “Safety is the most important thing. He recently had the opportunity to receive an update from the service secretaries and chiefs on the steps that are being taken and, again, is confident in their decision.”

The dynamic V-22 has long been a controversial aircraft, with safety concerns driven by its unique ability to hover like a helicopter and fly like a propeller airplane. The November crash was the first fatal Air Force V-22 accident since 2010, but it followed three Marine Corpse crashes since the start of 2022 and raised from 12 to 20 the number of military members killed in recent accidents.

The Air Force last grounded its CV-22 fleet in 2022, after two incidents of “hard clutch engagement,” a situation in which the clutch slips, causing a fail-safe system to transfer power from one engine to the other, at which point the clutch would re-engage, generating enormous spikes in torque. Hard clutch engagement was blamed for causing one of the deadly Marine Corps crashes.

In February 2023, the V-22 Joint Program Office imposed flight-hour limits on “input quill assemblies,” a V-22 component believed to be responsible for the hard-clutch engagement problem.

What caused the crash, however, remains unclear. AFSOC said its initial findings suggest a material failure, rather than pilot error, and the command confirmed it had identified which part failed in the deadly crash, but had not yet concluded why the failure occurred. NAVAIR and AFSOC officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine on March 8 had did not have new information to announce on the cause of the crash.

There are three ongoing Air Force reviews regarding the CV-22, AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind said last month at the AFA Warfare Symposium:

A Safety Investigation Board is investigating the crash and should provide findings to prevent future mishaps

An Accident Investigation Board will determine the causes of the crash and be released publicly

And a broader review intended to answer the question, “Is the CV-22 force appropriately organized, trained, and equipped for safe, effective, and efficient special operations?” Bauernfeind said.

In addition to the Air Force reviews, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Government Accountability Office are conducting their own investigations into the V-22 fleet and its safety.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, released a statement criticizing the decision to lift the grounding order.

“DOD is lifting the Osprey grounding order despite not providing the Oversight Committee and the American people answers about the safety of this aircraft,” Comer said. “The House Oversight Committee has yet to receive adequate information requested from DoD as part of our ongoing investigation launched months ago into the safety and performance of the Osprey aircraft. Serious concerns remain such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks. “

Since 1991, the Osprey has suffered 10 fatal crashes, killing 57 service members. That performance has garnered a reputation for accidents that proponents argue is unfounded, noting that V-22 safety data is comparable to other aircraft.

While the aircraft does offer unique capabilities, Pentagon officials seem increasingly focused on developing newer platforms to replace the Osprey.

“There’s been upgrades to this technology that was basically developed in the 1980s,” Bauernfeind said. “And as we move forward, what are the future capabilities that will eventually provide the next generation of capability?”

Bell Helicopter, which developed the Osprey, is developing a next-generation tilt-rotor aircraft, the V-280, for the Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. That uses a simplified system to transition from vertical to horizontal flight, moving only the propellers, and not both engines as it transitions.

CENTCOM Boss Presses Lawmakers for Counter-Drone Funds That ‘Will Save Lives’

March 7, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Army Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, urged lawmakers to approve more than half a billion dollars in funding to combat unmanned aerial systems in the Middle East after months of attacks by Iran-backed militia groups.

The $95 billion national security supplemental package that passed the Senate in February contained $531 million for counter-UAS efforts in CENTCOM, and Kurilla told the Senate Armed Service Committee on March 7 that those funds will allow him to procure “technology I need to get forward into the theater that will save lives.”

Much of the focus surrounding the supplemental has been on the aid designated for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. But Kurilla told committee chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) that the package is “absolutely critical” for his command as well—it designates $2.4 billion specifically for CENTCOM “and to replace combat expenditures for weapons in the Red Sea,” according to a Senate Appropriations Committee summary.

The Houthi rebel group, backed by Iran, has been conducting a monthslong campaign against commercial shipping and naval vessels in the region using drones, cruise missiles, and anti-ship ballistic missiles. On March 6, CENTCOM reported that three sailors on a merchant vessel died in a Houthi missile strike in the Gulf of Aden.

Other Iran-backed militia groups launched more than 150 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, from October through January, culminating in the deaths of three U.S. soldiers and injuries to more than 40 other service members in a drone attack near the Syrian border on Jan. 28, marking the first time American troops were killed by enemy fire since the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began in October.

The $531 million for CENTCOM “is for counter-unmanned aerial system defense, the various systems that are shooting down a lot of these systems, it’s for our command and control systems,” Kurilla said. “It’s for a lot of the modernization efforts that we need.”

Kurilla also said an integrated air and missile defense system to counter the increased attacks on U.S. service members is “one of the top things” the CENTCOM is working on.

“Through our regional partners, one of the first things that we’re trying to do is come up with a common air picture,” Kurilla said. “You have to be able to see the threat before you can defeat it, where there’s many elements that we are doing in terms of radar sharing agreements with a lot of our regional partners.”

Troops in CENTCOM are also experimenting with affordable new technology to improve operational security, Kurilla said.

“There is the technology, there are things out there, we have to continue to experiment,” Kurilla said. “We’re experimenting right now with a system that actually can go after both UAVs and land attack cruise missiles because it can go 300 knots, but if you go out there and you decide not to engage, you can bring it back and have it land. What we have to get better at, is the cost curve on that, to get those systems to be less expensive, less expensive.”

The CENTCOM boss cautioned against the proliferation of small, nimble, and inexpensive Iranian drones.

“That is one of the top threats because it is it is inexpensive, it’s a precision-guided weapon,” Kurilla noted. “Iran produces some that can go over 2,000 kilometers with those weapon systems. The bigger concern is if you start talking about swarm. So we need to continue to invest in things like high-powered microwave to be able to counter a drone swarm that is coming at you.”

Kurilla acknowledged the effectiveness of systems like the Coyote air defense weapon, but stressed that “nothing is 100 percent” and argued the need for a layered defense strategy.

The ongoing attacks by the Houthi group on shipping routes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait demonstrate the difficulty in effectively countering them. Despite strikes and counterstrikes from the U.S. military, the Iranian-backed group has shot down two USAF MQ-9 Reapers, each costing $30 million, within three months since November.

CENTCOM needs broader government support in denying Tehran the ability to resupply the Houthis, Kurilla said.

“Anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, and the myriad of other systems that they are using all provided by Iran, but to degrade that capability means nothing if Iran is able to resupply them,” Kurilla said. “So we have an effort to deny Iran the ability to resupply them, and that’s where we need more of an international, and a whole-of-government approach to be able to stop Iran from resupplying the Houthis.”