WORLD: Budget

June 18, 2026
Inside the $1.5T Budget Request By Greg Hadley, Matthew Cox, Steve Losey The Trump administration’s record-breaking $1.5 trillion defense budget request for fiscal 2027 would represent a $441 billion increase over the fiscal 2026 budget, a 44 percent jump that...
Pilot, leader, and diplomat. “Chappie” was born in Pensacola, Fla., in 1920, the youngest of 17 children. At the age of 17 during World War II he and a number of other Black men went off to college at Tuskegee...

WORLD: Air

June 18, 2026
USAF Tests New Air-to-Air Missile  By Stephen Losey The military’s secretive new air-to-air missile appears to have been publicly photographed for the first time during testing. A missile matching previously released information and renders of the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical...
DOD Personnel by the numbers: Total Force; end strength and manpower trends; breakdowns by sex, rank, region, command, Air Force Specialty Codes, and more.

Letters

June 18, 2026
We love letters! Write to us at letters@afa.org. To be published, letters should be timely, relevant and concise. Include your name and location. Letters may be edited for space and the editors have final say on which are published. All...
China’s rise, Iranian terror, and Russian belligerence point to the enduring need for deterrent airpower. Scale matters. The U.S. Air Force may not need to match China plane for plane, but it cannot continue to shrink to a shadow of its former size. Airpower is ...
The Air Force has five Institutional Commands focused on the recruit, train, and equip function of the department, and 10 Service Component Commands focused on meeting the needs of the nation’s joint combatant commands.