An annual award has gone to one of the U.S. Air Force’s most secretive drone squadrons, offering a very rare window into its activities. The 30th Reconnaissance Squadron is one of two units known to operate the stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel, and it is unusual to hear anything about its operational exploits. Much about the RQ-170 itself remains highly classified 17 years after its existence was first officially acknowledged.

The General Atomics Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Squadron of the Year award for 2025 was presented to the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Tuesday, at which TWZ was in attendance. The AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies works together with General Atomics’ Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI) to recognize an Air Force drone unit in this way each year.

“The RPA Trophy is awarded annually at the USAF level for outstanding performance of active duty, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard … squadrons in achieving persistent attack and/or reconnaissance over the preceding calendar year,” the Mitchell Institute told TWZ in a statement. “Squadrons are judged on performance across their specified mission sets, exercise participation, and squadron and individual achievements.”

The institute sent an additional statement regarding this year’s particular award to the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron, which is as follows:

“Through relentless combat support, operational agility, and enterprise leadership, the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron – known as the Blackbirds – has set the standard for the remotely piloted aircraft community and strengthened the Joint Force’s intelligence advantage. In 2025, the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron conducted intrusive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions across three areas of responsibility, filling critical intelligence gaps and disrupting enemy networks. In the face of urgent deployment requirements, the squadron demonstrated exceptional agility, rapidly pivoting resources to establish forward operating locations and execute critical missions under severely compressed timelines. The Blackbirds’ accomplishments paved the way for future remotely piloted aircraft capability, distinctly identifying them as the Air Force’s most outstanding RPA squadron.“

Larry Stutzriem, the AFA’s Executive Vice President, while presenting the award to representatives of the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron ahead of a panel at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“In 2025, the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron conducted 87 ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] missions across three different AORs [areas of responsibility], filled critical intelligence gaps, and disrupted enemy networks,” Stutzriem said. “On the unit mobility side, the Blackbirds executed 7.2 million dollars worth of airlift in six movements across four combatant commands, moving 250 tons of personnel, top secret material, and equipment to provide low-observable RPA support for a critical Secretary of War-directed mission.”

“With their deployments, the Blackbirds demonstrated exceptional agility under extremely compressed timelines,” he added.

Furthermore, during 2025, the squadron “also executed six large force exercises to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures; validated joint force tactical objectives in land and maritime environments; and provided combat-relevant training,” according to Stutzriem. “Instructors and evaluators graduated the largest ever combat mission-ready class, 30 percent ahead of schedule, and accelerated mission-ready status 33 percent, while increasing total unit aircrew by 26 percent.”

Though Stutzriem noted that the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron provided “low-observable RPA support,” no explicit mention was made of the RQ-170. Whether or not the squadron may now operate other kinds of low-observable (stealthy) drones is unknown. As mentioned, to date, the Air Force has only confirmed that Sentinels are assigned to two units, the other being the 44th Reconnaissance Squadron. Both the 30th and 44th are assigned to the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Between 20 and 30 RQ-170s, in total, are understood to be in the Air Force’s inventory.

What three specific AORs the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron operated in during 2025 is also not known.

However, at least one, and possibly two, RQ-170s took part in the mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in January of this year, as you can read more about here. It’s very likely that the Sentinels were tracking Maduro ahead of the operation. In December 2025, Air Forces Southern (AFSOUTH) had also made a post on X that included a picture of an individual wearing a name patch with the silhouette of Sentinel and the sleeve insignia of the 432nd Wing, prompting questions about whether the drones were operating in the region. The post was subsequently deleted.

Another footage of U.S. RQ-170 stealth drone returning to Puerto Rico from Venezuela. https://t.co/c7yKubc7jc pic.twitter.com/PLaxEaxFcX

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 3, 2026

The original AFSOUTH post, the RQ-170 patch is on the first image on the right. https://t.co/UdsT33sX6s pic.twitter.com/z7FjKBjgPl

— SA Defensa (@SA_Defensa) December 19, 2025

Further in the past, RQ-170s are also known to have been deployed to the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Pacific. The Sentinel first emerged publicly in Afghanistan in the late 2000s, prompting the U.S. military to confirm its existence in 2009. Sentinels are notably understood to have surveilled Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in the lead-up to the raid that led to his death in May 2011.

Later in 2011, one of the drones infamously went down in Iran while presumed to be on a mission to monitor aspects of that country’s nuclear program. With that in mind, it is possible, if not extremely probable, that RQ-170s likely played a role in relation to the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last year. Sentinels could have provided direct surveillance over the sites in question, as well as collecting post-mission bomb damage assessments and other intelligence. These are exactly the kinds of missions the drones were designed for and that operators have trained for.

A satellite image available through Apple Maps, seen below, also shows an RQ-170 at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy, likely in the 2023-2024 timeframe, based on the state of construction visible elsewhere at the base. It is not known how many Sentinels were deployed to Sigonella and for how long. The Apple Maps image does lend some credence to earlier reports that these drones may have flown missions in the Black Sea region, gathering intelligence on Russian forces on the heavily defended, occupied Crimean Peninsula, between 2022 and 2023.

Overall, the RQ-170 does still appear to be a go-to for performing penetrating tactical reconnaissance missions, especially when there is a need to provide persistent surveillance in denied areas, resulting in extremely important intelligence collection.

Again, it is important to reiterate here that we do not know if the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron operates any other stealthy drones beyond the RQ-170, or has in the past. A very stealthy high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) surveillance and reconnaissance drone commonly and unofficially referred to as the RQ-180, or an evolution thereof, burst into the public eye in March after it was spotted landing in broad daylight at a base in Greece. Much about the drone, including what units are involved in its operation and where the home base of the fleet is, as well as the reasons for its deployment to the region, has yet to emerge. It does seem unlikely that the 30th would have taken on operation of the RQ-180, which is a larger strategic reconnaissance-focused platform compared to the smaller, tactically-minded, and less exquisite RQ-170. This is also just one example of what could still be lurking in the classified realm.

American RQ-180 stealth drone landing in Greece, supporting US operations against Iran. pic.twitter.com/Go5YHBM1p8

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 6, 2026

Whether or not the awarding of the 2025 RPA Squadron of the Year trophy to the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron might now point to a new willingness to talk about that unit’s activities and/or the RQ-170 remains to be seen. Regardless, the award and its description are yet more reminders of just how important the Sentinel remains nearly two decades after it first appeared.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post New Details About Secretive RQ-170 Sentinel Drone Squadron Shared With New Award appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. State Department today approved the possible sale of 48 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The proposed deal, worth an estimated total cost of $24.3 billion, was announced as the Kingdom is in the midst of a fierce fight against the Houthi rebels of Yemen. It marks a major policy shift, with Washington previously being unwilling to export the advanced stealth fighters to Arab states and will likely serve as a reminder at a very challenging time for the Saudis of the unique security capabilities that only the U.S. can provide them.

In addition to the jets, which will be conventional takeoff and landing variants, Saudi Arabia has requested 49 Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines, support and other items.

Despite concerns from Israel that providing Saudi Arabia with the advanced fighters will tip the balance of power in the region, the proposed sale of this equipment and support “will not alter the military balance in the region,” the State Department noted. 

The United States has a requirement to maintain Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge, which essentially guarantees that Israel will be prioritized for advanced U.S. weapons ahead of Arab states in the region. Among these advanced weapons, the stealthy F-35 is highly prominent.

You can read our past feature about the wide-ranging impacts of an F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia here.

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” the State Department wrote. “The proposed sale will improve Saudi Arabia’s capability to deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense, and improving interoperability with U.S. forces, and other regional and NATO forces.  The proposed sale will also augment Saudi Arabia’s operational aircraft and enhance its air-to-air, and air-to-ground self-defense capability.  The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment and services into its armed forces.”

In November, “President Trump approved a major defense sale package, including future F-35 deliveries, which strengthens the U.S. defense industrial base and ensures Saudi Arabia continues to buy American,” according to the White House.

Trump has pushed for closer ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and wants the Kingdom to join the Abraham Accords initiative. This is a set of agreements that establish normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and different Arab states. Doing so would be a major breakthrough, following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and others.

A Saudi F-35 deal was also discussed under the Biden administration, as part of a broader deal that sought to normalize the Kingdom’s relations with Israel.

This is a developing story.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

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Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force are once again discussing new-build F-16s. The development comes as the service grapples with a fighter fleet that is simultaneously aging, shrinking, ballooning in sustainment cost and being called upon to do more. This also comes at a time when the Air Force is now investing heavily in the F-15EX, another fourth-generation type it hadn’t bought for many years after committing to an all stealth future fighter fleet in the 2000s.

According to Aviation Week, the company has proposed an aircraft called the F-16G, an enhanced derivative of the F-16 Block 70. The proposed configuration reportedly incorporates conformal fuel tanks, 600-gallon wing tanks, an infrared search-and-track (IRST) system, a Sniper targeting pod, and a drag chute. All of these features have appeared on previous F-16s in one form or another. Lockheed is positioning the new version as a potential replacement for USAF F-16 units whose existing aircraft are approaching the end of their useful lives.

The Air Force, for its part, says that it has not yet settled on either the requirements or the options for addressing the problem. As it stands, the service has not committed to buying any new F-16s. The proposal is nevertheless notable because it follows an earlier round of discussions in which the Air Force was already examining whether a new-build F-16 could help address the growing fighter gap.

In December 2025, Inside Defense reported that the Air Force had reached out to Lockheed Martin about pricing for Block 70 F-16s — the current export standard. The conversations were described as exploratory, with no firm procurement plan, but the reporting established that the idea had moved beyond a purely theoretical discussion. One congressional aide told the publication that officials were looking at ways to “plug their holes” as part of their future force-structure planning.

A new Viper variant based on the Block 70 would be cheaper than replacing an aging F-16 with an F-35, while allowing the Air Force to retain much of the infrastructure, training, and experience associated with the existing aircraft. This is a major advantage as the F-35’s unique infrastructure and support requirements are a costly addition to the aircraft’s base price tag. An even bigger factor is unrelated to acquisition and bed-down costs: a Block 70 is far cheaper to sustain and operate over its service life than an F-35, a difference that compounds significantly across a fleet. 

The idea of a new Viper buy had already reached the highest levels of Air Force leadership several months earlier.

In May 2025, Sen. Tom Cotton asked then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin about the possibility of buying a U.S.-configured “Block 80” F-16 if Congress provided additional funding. Allvin did not endorse the proposal, but he did not dismiss it either, saying he needed to examine the time required to adapt the Block 70 design, where a U.S. aircraft could fit into Lockheed Martin’s production line, and what the industrial base could support. He also noted that the existing Block 70/72 line was already heavily occupied by foreign military sales.

At the same hearing, Allvin acknowledged the broader force-structure logic, saying the Air Force needed both the high-end capabilities required for an Indo-Pacific fight and other fighters that “may not need to be as sophisticated as our fifth-generation, sixth-generation.” He also emphasized that the first increment of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) was intended to augment rather than replace crewed fighters like the F-16.

Taken together, the developments show that the concept has remained alive through the Air Force’s evolving force-structure debate.

The Numbers Game

At first glance, the idea of buying new F-16s for the Air Force in the late 2020s might seem puzzling. The F-16 entered U.S. service in the 1970s, and the Air Force stopped buying new examples for itself more than 20 years ago. The established plan has been to replace the legacy F-16 fleet with the F-35A. For a long time, the service’s stated ambition was ultimately an all-stealth tactical fighter force — but that vision has already largely melted away as budget, operational and industrial-capacity realities have set in.

Today, the fighter fleet is still far older on average than it needs to be and legacy fourth generation types, minus a handful of new F-15EXs, are now well over 20-years old at the youngest. The oldest of these aircraft are increasingly challenging and costly to support. Meanwhile, the F-35 has had its fair share of successes and challenges, but replacing all of the USAF’s oldest fighters with JSFs in a timely and efficient manner, and operating those aircraft over future decades, looks increasingly problematic. The F-47 is also on the horizon, but that aircraft fits a different capability set more aligned with the F-22 than the F-16 and will come at a much higher cost than any fighter currently being procured.

Above all else, the problem is that the Air Force’s fighter challenge is one of numbers.

The service’s 2025 long-term fighter force-structure assessment concluded that it needed 1,558 combat-coded manned fighters by 2035 to reach what it considers a low-risk operational posture. The Air Force had only 1,098 fighters in its inventory as of May 2026, below the statutory minimum of 1,145.

At the same time, the service is trying to retire old aircraft, expand F-35A procurement, introduce the F-47, acquire additional F-15EXs, and field large numbers of CCAs. Those programs address different requirements, but they all compete for money, industrial capacity, personnel, and infrastructure.

For the Air Force, the question has not simply been whether the F-16 remains militarily useful, but also whether the aircraft provides a possible answer to a capacity shortfall, while also dealing with delays in F-35 deliveries, and the retirement of the A-10, blowing another hole in the inventory. Meanwhile, some older F-16s that had been expected to leave the fleet are instead receiving upgrades, including a new radar and electronic warfare suite, to keep them flying longer.

That creates a difficult transition period. The Air Force wants to retire aging fighters, but it also needs to keep enough aircraft available while their replacements arrive. The F-16 keeps reappearing because it offers a way of addressing at least part of that problem with a very well known commodity and without requiring every legacy fighter to be replaced by an F-35 or F-15EX.

The Production Line Matters

There is another reason the F-16 procurement idea refuses to disappear: Lockheed Martin already has an F-16 production line operating in the United States.

The Greenville, South Carolina, facility was established to produce Block 70/72 aircraft for foreign customers and is now the world’s only F-16 production facility. The Air Force helped establish the line as part of its broader effort to sustain the F-16 industrial base through foreign military sales. The line moved there after the massive Lockheed Martin plant at Fort Worth, Texas — where the F-16 had been built for decades — transitioned fully over to F-35 production.

So, buying new F-16s would not require reviving a dormant production line or spinning up an entirely new aircraft program. The basic manufacturing infrastructure already exists, and the additional work required for a U.S.-specific aircraft may end up being minimal — potentially amounting to little more than taking an existing Block 70 and tweaking it, rather than a large-scale new engineering, testing, and weapons-integration effort.

The Air Force has been aware of that possibility for years. In 2021, then-Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Will Roper argued that the service should consider the new F-16 production line as part of its capacity solution. Roper specifically pointed to the upgraded capabilities available from the South Carolina production line.

However, Greenville is not an empty production line waiting for a U.S. customer. Lockheed Martin’s F-16 facility already has a substantial Block 70/72 backlog for foreign operators, with the company reporting more than 100 aircraft in the queue and continued potential for additional international orders. It’s also unclear how much the facility could realistically be expanded, since it was designed around a relatively more modest foreign military sales production volume rather than the kind of surge a large U.S. order could require. Still, the USAF could step in and buy up open slots, which would also ensure the line stays open for the foreseeable future, which has major strategic and industrial protection benefits.

That brings us back to Gen. Allvin’s question in May 2025 about where a U.S. aircraft could fit on the production line. Even if the Air Force decided to buy the jets, it would have to compete for production capacity with an established international order book while developing whatever U.S.-specific configuration, testing, and integration work it requires.

This Is Not Your Dad’s F-16

The proposed F-16G is also significant because it is not simply another upgraded F-16C/D like the USAF already has.

Lockheed’s proposed configuration reportedly would add conformal fuel tanks and 600-gallon wing tanks, along with an IRST, and the latest Sniper targeting pod, as well as a drag chute. All of these systems are already fielded and available today rather than requiring new development.

Those additions point toward an aircraft intended to provide even more basing flexibility, range, persistence, weapons and sensing capability than the current F-16, which had already grown into a medium-weight fighter years ago. That is relevant to how such an aircraft might actually fit into the future Air Force.

A contemporary F-16 is already a very different proposition from the aircraft that entered U.S. service decades ago. Modern AESA radars, electronic warfare systems, digital architecture, datalinks, advanced cockpit interfaces and weapons have substantially expanded its capabilities. The proposed F-16G would push that evolution further, but, like the F-15EX, it would still occupy a different part of the spectrum from the F-35 and whatever eventually emerges from the F-47 program.

That distinction could be useful in a larger force. An F-35 provides capabilities, particularly its combination of stealth and advanced sensor fusion, that an F-16 can never reproduce. But the Air Force does not conduct every mission in the most heavily defended portion of an adversary’s airspace. Homeland defense, training, defensive counter-air, a range of strike missions, and operations in permissive or partially contested environments don’t necessarily require the same characteristics as a penetration mission against an integrated air defense network. In a major conflict, no fighter will fight alone, either. Far from it. Operation Midnight Hammer, the B-2 strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, provides a salient example here, with F-16s flying deep into the country along with F-22s and F-35s, to clear the way for the B-2 strike force. By now, the Air Force is well-versed in leveraging the total-force fourth-and-fifth-generation mix, and it has discovered that they complement each other in unique ways that can be an advantage, not just compensation for lack of capability.

As far as the drag chute, that is a highly relevant addition to the USAF’s F-16 capability set. The chute would allow for the F-16 to better execute Agile Combat Employment (ACE), which includes operating from austere airfields within the enemy’s weapons engagement zone. The F-16 can get off the runway pretty quick, but landing is a different story. The chute can help greatly in this regard.

There is no question that an F-16 is not a replacement for an F-35. But it could help the Air Force better allocate its limited inventory of increasingly expensive fifth-generation and future sixth-generation aircraft while also maintaining a much larger overall fighter fleet.

CCA Changes the Calculus for Fourth-Gen Jets

One factor that is easy to overlook is Collaborative Combat Aircraft. CCAs are not just a complement to fifth- and sixth-generation fighters, they can also breathe new relevance into fourth-generation types like the F-16. Pairing stealthy, and even optionally expendable CCAs with a fighter like the F-16G could substantially boost its survivability and lethality by pushing sensing, shooting, and some of the risk forward onto uncrewed platforms, extending the F-16’s combat relevance even into higher-end scenarios where it would otherwise be at a disadvantage. In that sense, CCA may end up being arguably as relevant to fourth-generation aircraft as it is to fifth-generation ones.

In other words, CCAs are a positive factor in the F-16G’s business case.

While the F-22 and F-35 are slated to get CCAs first, the F-16G can be built ready to interoperate with them, which could be a massive force multiplier to what would be the most affordable crewed tactical asset in the inventory. CCAs can eventually be used to also help augment F-16Gs operating in a homeland defense mission and other more mundane roles as well.

The Guard Argument

New Block 70s could make particular sense for the Air National Guard.

The Guard continues to operate F-16s in large numbers, meaning that its personnel, facilities, simulators, and maintenance infrastructure are already built around the aircraft. A new-build F-16 could therefore replace an aging F-16 without requiring the same organizational transition associated with converting a unit to an entirely different fighter, and especially a highly complex fifth-generation type with all its unique support requirements.

That has financial implications beyond the aircraft itself. Replacing an existing F-16 squadron with Block 70s would reduce construction costs and training requirements because much of the existing infrastructure and expertise could be retained.

The Air Force would still have to pay for the aircraft and sustainment, but it would not be starting from scratch in terms of operating infrastructure, while the modernized fourth-generation capabilities of an F-16G would still mark a step forward for the Guard over its older F-16s.

It’s worth noting there has also been discussion of replacing more aging F-16s with additional F-15EXs instead. That path, however, is more expensive on both the acquisition and operating-cost side, and it would still require units to convert to a different airframe rather than simply recapitalizing in place.

Viper Refreshed

A new F-16 offers a fresh and highly mature airframe — one with a full service-life ahead of it, on the order of 12,000 flight hours without the need for structural upgrades — double that of the original F-16. This is compared to existing F-16s in the inventory with the decades of wear and fatigue already accumulated on them, with structural upgrades keeping them in the air. That difference in remaining structural life is arguably the single biggest advantage a new-build aircraft has compared with extending an existing one.

Dumping more money into existing F-16s is becoming questionable. Service life extensions and technical upgrades can only go so far and supporting these jets is becoming harder as parts dry up and suppliers who made them are long gone. A new airframe would give the Guard many decades of highly efficient service and the piece of mind for future force planning that goes with it.

Also, just like F-15EX, the development of the Block 70 F-16 has already been paid for largely by foreign customers over many years. It is as off-the-shelf of a solution as it gets and that is a very attractive proposition to an air arm trying to balance its books.

Above all, F-16 sustainment and operating costs run far below the F-35’s — a gap that already holds true even with older F-16s, and one that would widen further with new-build jets.

The Argument Against Simply Buying More F-35s

One seemingly obvious alternative would be to accelerate F-35A procurement. But the F-35 is not simply another fighter that can be substituted one-for-one whenever an F-16 reaches the end of its service life. That would also be difficult to do in practice. F-35A production is effectively capped and there are dense order books, and the well-documented troubles with the Block 4 upgrade are a huge factor pushing the Air Force to look at alternatives like the F-16G in the first place.

The Air Force’s current force-structure plans call for significantly more fighters overall, while the service is simultaneously pursuing F-35As, F-15EXs, and the F-47.

Among the reasons why a modernized F-16 might be considered alongside those programs are concerns not only about the cost of those aircraft, but also about the timing of F-35 deliveries, something that has been disrupted by well-publicized problems with Joint Strike Fighter upgrades. At the same time, keeping older F-16s active through upgrades is an increasingly unattractive way of managing the shortfall.

The issue is therefore less about choosing the F-16 instead of the F-35 than about deciding whether the Air Force should use both aircraft for different portions of the force structure.

The service is already doing something along these lines with the F-15EX. It has accepted that a modernized fourth-generation aircraft can have a role alongside the F-35 and the F-22, rather than requiring every new fighter to be stealthy.

A new F-16 would extend that logic to a lower-cost segment of the fleet, potentially allowing the Air Force to use F-35s where their particular capabilities are most valuable while maintaining additional capacity with a less expensive aircraft.

What Could Happen Next?

Even if Air Force leaders conclude that the F-16G makes operational sense, Congress would still have to decide whether it is worth funding.

The December 2025 reporting identified the central problem: lawmakers would want the service to demonstrate that buying new aircraft is preferable to continuing to upgrade the F-16s it already owns. They would also have to weigh the proposal against the F-35 and CCA programs.

If an existing F-16 can be kept operational with a relatively inexpensive upgrade, a new aircraft has to justify its acquisition cost and the additional long-term sustainment burden. But if maintaining an increasingly old F-16 fleet doesn’t save large sums of money over the long haul, the new Block 70 variant begins to look more compelling.

There remains a substantial gap between Lockheed Martin pitching the F-16G and the Air Force actually buying it. The service told TWZ that it is “in the initial phases of analyzing options for the next Future Years Defense Program.” The Air Force spokesperson added: “At this stage, we have neither defined the precise mission requirements nor the spectrum of options that could fill it.”

That is consistent with the status described by Inside Defense nine months earlier. At the time, the Air Force had no plans to procure Block 70s, and the discussions with Lockheed were described as exploratory. Even if senior officials ultimately favored the aircraft, Inside Defense reported that the program could not appear in the Future Years Defense Program until at least fiscal 2028 because the FY2027 budget process was already too far along.

The F-16G therefore remains a proposal rather than a program. But the persistence of the idea is itself significant. It should be noted that the F-15EX buy emerged out of very similar machinations, with the benefits proving to be undeniable.

The new proposal would let some Guard and Reserve units swap their F-16s for vastly improved F-16s — the same logic that drove the F-15EX buy — while also keeping the Greenville line hot, which is a significant benefit in its own right. And it accomplishes both in the most efficient way possible: not just in acquisition cost, but in sustainment cost, which is really the more problematic burden of the two. In the end, this points to another glaring reality check for the all-stealth-force concept, a vision the Air Force has effectively already abandoned.

The Air Force has spent years describing the F-35 as the replacement for its F-16 fleet, yet it now has to contend with aging F-16s, delayed or constrained fighter production, a larger stated requirement for total fighter capacity, and the lengthy transition toward the F-47 and uncrewed combat aircraft. In that environment, a new-build F-16 provides an option that sits between extending legacy aircraft and buying the most sophisticated — and expensive — fighters available.

Regardless, there are so many priorities facing the force right now, buying new F-16s will be a challenge at every turn, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become too compelling of a proposition to accept. Still, many will argue that every dollar should be invested in higher-end fighter and uncrewed platforms that are more survivable against America’s primary pacing threat, China. That country is rapidly evolving its own air arm with stealth fighters and advanced uncrewed aircraft. Stepping back to the F-16 while facing down such a threat can appear to be counterproductive when taken at face value. At the same time, the F-16 is already slated to stay in the inventory by the hundreds for decades to come, which does take some of the bite out of that argument.

In the end, it is remarkable that the F-16 was supposed to have left the U.S. fighter equation years ago. Instead, every time the Air Force looks closely at the gap between the fighter force it has and the force it says it needs, the aircraft somehow finds a way back into the conversation.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post New-Build F-16s For The USAF Is An Idea That Won’t Go Away, For Good Reason appeared first on TWZ.

The Pentagon has reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin to lay the groundwork for stepped-up production and delivery of new AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missiles (JATM) to the U.S. military and allied air arms in the coming years. The AIM-260 is still in development, but the head of the Air Force Test Center also touted efforts to further accelerate that work just earlier this week. From the start, the U.S. military has presented JATM as especially critical for ensuring China, with its own growing array of longer-range air-to-air missiles, does not gain an edge in future air combat.

The new framework agreement announced today “is critical to ensuring long-term demand signals flow to key suppliers, allowing Lockheed Martin and the munitions supply chain to invest in manufacturing capacity, workforce, and production efficiencies,” according to a Pentagon press release. “It establishes a framework for future Multi-Year Procurement (MYP) of JATM, executing congressional authority to secure the nation’s highest-priority missile systems.”

“This agreement forms the foundational agreement for a multiyear procurement contract, pending Congressional approval, that provides long-term demand to strengthen and expand the defense industrial base for the program,” according to a separate release from Lockheed Martin.

In response to questions from TWZ, the Pentagon declined to comment on the projected number of JATMs covered under this agreement, as well as estimated costs and delivery schedules.

U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors are expected to be the first types to fly operationally armed with AIM-260s. Integration on other platforms, such as variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Air Force’s forthcoming F-47 sixth-generation fighter, is expected to follow. JATM, which is designed to have the same general form factor as the existing AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), has been discussed as part of the arsenal for the Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, as well.

The releases today from the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin confirm that the new framework deal also includes planned foreign military sales of AIM-260s. Australia, one of America’s top allies, is the first confirmed international customer for the JATM, and plans to integrate the missiles on its F/A-18Fs, F-35As, and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets. The Royal Australian Air Force’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat CCA-type drones, initial versions of which are already capable of firing AIM-120s, might be another AIM-260 launch platform in the future.

The AIM-260 remains in development, with the Navy and Air Force test communities supporting that work.

“We are accelerating weapons development from high-end air dominance weapons like the JATM to hypersonic strike systems like the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, head of the Air Force Test Center (AFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base in California, told TWZ and other outlets at a media roundtable yesterday. The roundtable took place at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“We’re actively testing JATM, and it’s progressing along its program path. In test, we are working through the development stages there,” Massaro added. “So, we’re testing it in [sic] the ground with models, like I mentioned. We’re testing it in the air on aircraft. So, from a performance standpoint, I’ll hold on to that from an operational security perspective. But we’re happy seeing where it’s going, and we expect that to be a key piece of capability for our warfighters to have.”

“Just from a testing perspective, we’re always looking at making sure that we’ve got the throughput,” he added when asked if he could talk about challenges or other issues AFTC has run up against in work on the AIM-260. “So, from a test perspective only, infrastructure and throughput to make sure that we can get things out … and make the testing happen. But I’m not, from a capabilities perspective, worried about the system.”

It is unclear when the first operational AIM-260s may begin entering the U.S. inventory. When the program was first disclosed to the public in 2019, the stated goal was to start fielding the missiles in 2022. There were also reports in late 2025 that funding issues had caused a three-month delay, based on a fact sheet distributed to some members of the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services. The committee later said that the information was incorrect.

Work to date on JATM has been conducted under a heavy veil of secrecy, with the existence of the program only being announced in 2019. The first public glimpse of the missile only emerged in May of this year. Beyond the aforementioned size requirement and that the new missile will offer significantly greater engagement range over the AIM-120, details remain limited. Readers can learn more about what we do know so far here.

What is clear is that the growing reach of Chinese air-to-air missiles has been a key driver behind the JATM program, with Air Force officials having explicitly mentioned the PL-15 in the past. China continues to pursue even longer-ranged and otherwise more advanced air-to-air missiles, as you can learn more about in this past TWZ feature. The Air Force has previously raised the prospect of a general threat ecosystem that includes anti-missiles with ranges of up to 1,000 miles emerging by 2050.

The AIM-260 is not the only longer-ranged air-to-air missile known to be in development in the United States, either. In 2024, the Navy revealed it had begun fielding an air-launched version of the surface-launched Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), called the AIM-174B Gunslinger, at least on a limited level. Just in August of this year, the service disclosed the existence of another very long-range air-to-air missile, the AIM-424 Malice, which has already reached the flight testing phase of development.

An Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine last month that the service was “closely following” the Navy’s work on the AIM-424. In June, the Air Force itself shared details about another potential future air-to-air missile, dubbed the Air Force Long Range Weapon (AFLRW), including a target requirement for a maximum range of at least 1,000 nautical miles.

Based on past experiences with public disclosures about the AIM-260, AIM-174B, and AIM-424 programs, additional work on advanced longer-range air-to-air missiles is certainly ongoing in the classified realm.

Today’s announcement about the new framework agreement, together with Brig. Gen. Massaro’s brief update yesterday, makes clear there is a continued commitment to JATM amid a still-growing field of new, longer-range air-to-air missiles.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Pentagon Cuts New AIM-260 Air-To-Air Missile Production Deal, Testing Accelerating appeared first on TWZ.

The head of Air Mobility Command (AMC) on Wednesday offered some new details about what went into repairing a KC-135 Stratotanker riddled with shrapnel holes from an Iranian attack. We have previously written about a couple of these jets damaged during Operation Epic Fury (OEF) as they came through RAF Mildenhall in the U.K. on their way back to the U.S. for comprehensive repair work. We are also getting new information of how AMC kept its fleet operating at such a prolonged high-tempo ahead of and during OEF.

The discussion about the damaged tanker took place during a panel at the Air & Space Forces’ Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending. The tanker in question was damaged as it was preparing for a mission, explained AMC commander Lt. Gen. Daniel H. Tulley.

“A KC-135 ops crew is in the jet,” he said. “KC-135 maintenance team is about to launch this jet. Unexpected Alarm Red [an attack warning]. Everyone jumps in a bunker.”

After the barrage, the airmen emerged from their bunkers and checked out the plane.

“That aircraft is smoking,” Tulley said. “There are holes in it, and it’s a fully loaded KC-135. Two hundred thousand pounds of jet fuel. Took 48 hours for that [fuel] to be drained out of that aircraft. In the meantime, first on the scene was I think the pro super [production superintendent] and the expediter. They immediately began to collect the fuel… They start to patch the holes. They start to fix all the systems. Long story short, they were eventually able to get that plane to make a transoceanic flight back home to be fully repaired.”

Tulley did not say where the attack took place. However, as we have previously reported, five tankers were reportedly damaged in an Iranian long-range strike on Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB) in Saudi Arabia on March 14. That was later confirmed in a Department of War Inspector General report released earlier this week.

You can see two of the shrapnel-damaged KC-135s as they passed through the UK on the way home in the following photographs shared with us by aviation photographer Andrew McKelvey. We do not know if either of these is the one discussed by Tulley.

Lt. Gen. Linda Hurry, Commander of Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), followed Tulley’s comments with additional details about the repair work.

“I’ll pick right up on that because it was our aircraft battle damage repair team that was actually able to patch their aircraft back together to get it back to Tinker [Air Force Base in Oklahoma] that can put it completely back where it needed to be,” she noted. Tinker is home to the Expeditionary Depot Maintenance (EDMX), which is “responsible for maintaining the Air Force’s sole source for Aircraft Battle Damage Repair (ABDR) rapid repair capabilities for the entire tanker and bomber fleets,” according to the Air Force.

“So with Operation Epic Fury, we’re asking those questions: What can we sustain for how long? And it begs a question about regeneration,” Tulley further explained. “You know, our new teammates have regeneration as part of their doctrine, so readiness in contact is the way we’re approaching this. What can we do to improve how we generate capability while under fire, in contact, persistently in an extended or protracted conflict? Lots of great examples of work being done to get after this. General Hurry’s team has brought a lot of capability forward at Mildenhall Air Base.” 

One example of how this has worked has been repairing damaged aerial refueling booms in the U.K. instead of all the way back to the U.S., Tulley highlighted. The booms, which extend from the back of tankers so that receiving aircraft can get their gas, can be damaged by the process, especially during combat refueling.

“I think we turned 30 booms instead of bringing them all the way back to the states,” Tulley noted.

Repairing battle damage is certainly a unique situation for AMC airman, but keeping hundreds of the command’s tankers and cargo aircraft moving at such a high rate prior to and during the war was a huge undertaking that was helped by new maintenance concepts. The Air Force sent maintainers and parts to bases in Europe to drastically speed up major maintenance that would have demanded the aircraft return stateside.

“We moved some maintenance actions forward, so they didn’t have to – the aircraft didn’t have to go all the way back to the states,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said during his keynote speech earlier this week. “We put some of them in Europe, so they could get through some normal safety inspections that were either due or deferred. Got those done, and the aircraft doesn’t have to go all the way back to the states. They can go somewhere in Europe, get the thing done, and then get right back to the flight. And so, those measures by Air Mobility Command paid dividends in the readiness of our mobility fleet.”

Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), which maintains the service’s fleet of strategic bombers and its ICBM force, did something similar at RAF Fairford in the U.K., AFGSC commander Gen. Stephen L. Davis explained.

“It’s a complex problem,” said Davis. “I would say in the past we probably didn’t do this the right way. When we thought a conflict was kicking off, the first thing we do is start sending bombers forward, and that actually consumes our readiness. So I think we got it right during OEF.”

“We pushed maintainers and support personnel forward to RAF Fairford, and then we actually took the bombers, we loaded them up in CONUS [Continental United States]. We took them to the Middle East. They actually did a mission. They employed, deployed, conducted a combat mission, and then landed at Fairford. And then for the next, well, I guess they’ve been there for now six-plus months.”

“They’ve been conducting nearly daily operations out of there,” Davis proffered. “When bombers are back at home base, they build readiness. When we deploy it forward, they consume readiness. And then, as [Gen. Hurry] said, we’re getting great support in terms of parts, in terms of supplies, and in terms of forward depot support. So that fleet remains healthy.”

Being able to do as much repair and maintenance work as close to the front lines as possible will be hugely important in any future fight against China, and, unfortunately, repairing battle damaged aircraft will be necessary too. Clearly, the Air Force has learned some very important lessons from Epic Fury.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post How The Air Force Patched Up A Shrapnel-Damaged KC-135 appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. military’s top officer on Wednesday talked about how AI is changing the character of warfare and offered two examples to illustrate his points. His comments included new insights into how two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache crew members were rescued after being shot down by an Iranian drone near the coast of Oman in June. The recovery effort involved America’s first known use of an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) executing a personnel recovery action as part of a military search and rescue operation.

“Information moves so fast that leader decision times have compressed from weeks down to days down to seconds,” explained Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his keynote speech at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending. “In the future fight, advantage will go to the side who can see first, who can understand first, decide first, and act first, and along the way, be a learning organization, and no factor is accelerating change as fast as artificial intelligence and advancing cyber capabilities.”

“AI is here now, and it’s already changing the way militaries see, sense, decide, and act across the joint force,” the chairman proclaimed.

The first example Caine used to highlight these changes took place on June 8. After the Apache went down, “U.S. CENTCOM launched a rapid, responsive joint search and rescue effort to recover the crew. That response drew on the totality of the joint force, and ultimately was required to use enabled unmanned vessels to participate in the rescue of downed U.S. service members for the first time ever.”

As we noted in our previous coverage, CENTCOM deployed “a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel,” the command’s spokesman told us at the time.

The ability to pull off that rescue mission “did not appear overnight,” Caine pointed out. “It came from the men and women of Task Force 59, CENTCOM’s forward-leaning unmanned joint maritime unit who spent the last several years testing, integrating, and operationalizing unmanned systems and AI in one of the most demanding and kinetic environments on Earth right now.”

“What helped make this possible was not a bunch of general officers and flag officers,” Caine continued. “What made this possible was a bunch of entrepreneurial sailors and members of the joint force on watch floors, at piers, managing networks of unmanned systems across thousands of miles of water, and using AI to turn massive amounts of data into a crisp, clear, perfect maritime picture that allowed us to go grab those two soldiers in the water.”

The second example Caine shared about the use of AI “points in the other direction, not how quickly we are using these tools, but how quickly these tools are changing the threat.”

In Ukraine, “we see first-person view drones operating in heavily contested EMI [electromagnetic interference] environments. Some now using AI-enabled computer vision to continue to drive towards targets, even when there’s no GPS or the links are cut. That gives small units affordable precision and shows how quickly software and autonomy are changing what is possible at the tactical edge, and the results are stark.”

The use of AI to enable lower-end drone warfare is a topic TWZ has been among the first to point out.

“In certain locations on the front line of troops right now, the life expectancy of a new Russian recruit arriving on the front lines is as little as 20 to 30 minutes,” Caine added. “Think about that. This is what happens when low-cost precision is fielded fast, adapted quickly, and scaled across the battlefield.”

“The price of lethal exchange is decreasing day over day,” the chairman noted. “One wonders what the future of close air support looks like, but I am comforted by the fact that each and every one of you are in this room thinking about that. Taken together, these examples from the Straits of Hormuz to the front lines in Ukraine show how quickly technology is changing the character of war, and this means our joint force needs to do two things at one time.”

“[W]e need to prepare the joint force to win in this kind of conflict,” the general stated. “We have to assume from now on that our formations will be hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum, and tracked in real time, and we have to transition the joint force to be prepared to fight and win our future war by generating and delivering lethality at scale with an agile, optimized, high-low mix of combat capabilities to give the young members of the 2.8-million member all volunteer joint force the tools that they need before they need them.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com 

The post Apache Crew Rescue Highlights Need For AI In Combat Says Joint Chiefs Chairman appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force has been taking a new look at the feasibility of restarting production of the C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane as part of its still-evolving next-generation airlift plans. The service also continues to explore a wide range of next-generation aerial refueling concepts, including new stealthy and/or uncrewed tankers, but a firm vision for the way forward there has yet to emerge.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Daniel Tulley, head of Air Mobility Command (AMC), shared new details about future airlift and aerial refueling efforts, with TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

On the airlift side, the Air Force’s stated plan to date is to replace both the C-17A and C-5M Galaxy with a single Next-Generation Airlift (NGAL) platform, starting in the mid-2040s. Separately, the service is pursuing what could be a family of future aerial refueling capabilities under what is now called the Advanced Tanker Systems (ATS) program. Very broadly speaking, ATS presents a path toward what might come after the retirement of the aging KC-135 tanker fleet, though those aircraft are still expected to keep flying for years to come. The Air Force is also moving to further expand its fleet of newer KC-46A tankers in the interim, but persistent technical and other issues with that design continue to present hurdles.

At the roundtable today, Lt. Gen. Tulley was asked explicitly about restarting C-17 production. The manufacturer of those aircraft, Boeing, shuttered that line in 2015. The company also just marked the 35th anniversary of the design’s first flight yesterday.

“Heck yeah, but with a caveat, right?” Tulley said in response. “So we were just asking this question over the course of last week, and it’s in the context of next-generation airlift. So we are about to embark on the Analysis of Alternatives to replace the C-17 and replace the C-5. All options are on the table.”

“There’s always the option to service life extend the C-17, but the [production restart] question came up,” he continued. “I’ve heard this my entire career. Once we terminate an assembly line, can we ever bring it back? Does somebody store all the machinery and the dies and whatnot, and can you bring that out? So we’re asking that question.”

“But then whatever that answer is from the vendors, what will be the price tag associated with that?” he added. “You have to ask yourself, okay, is rebuilding a C-17 even if you make improvements – and there’s a loose analogy with the C-130J, [a] much more modern, capable variant of the C-130E [author’s note: the C-130J evolved more directly from the C-130H variant] I first learned to fly – if you do that with the C-17, is that the best move? Or are there new technologies that we can incorporate into it so that it can defend itself, so that it’s connected, it’s networked, it does all the things that maybe the current C-17 doesn’t do?”

“We’re looking into it as part of the Analysis of Alternatives. I’m hopeful that we’ll get to answer that question.”

In June, the House Armed Services Committee also directed the U.S. Air Force to prepare a formal briefing on the matter of new C-17 production in a report accompanying a draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2027.

The RAND Corporation did conduct a detailed, independent analysis more than a decade ago that assessed the costs and complexities that could come from Boeing building more C-17As, as well as other variants and derivatives of the design. RAND’s conclusion was that any of the courses of action would require billions of dollars of new investment and entail risks, as you can read more about in more detail here.

Foreign participation in a new C-17 production run could help at least defray costs. Australia, Canada, India, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom all currently fly Globemaster IIIs. The Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) initiative, a multinational arrangement with several European members, as well as the United States, also operates three of these aircraft.

Boeing told TWZ directly in June that unnamed C-17 operators had been reaching out about the prospect of restarting the production line, and that the company was “encouraged” by those discussions.

As Lt. Gen. Tulley stressed, there are significant questions about whether buying new-production C-17s, even with substantial improvements, is not only feasible, but a good use of resources. The Air Force’s Globemaster III fleet today continues to prove itself to be critical to the U.S. military’s ability to project power globally, and is in very high demand right now, especially amid the ongoing conflict with Iran.

The Air Force’s desire to replace both the C-17 and C-5, which are very different aircraft in form and function, could still easily lead the service down a different route. Boeing is not the only one looking at future NGAL opportunities. Another company, Radia, has been very actively pitching a clean-sheet design that is physically bigger than either the C-17 and the C-5, and that is geared toward greater operational flexibility, at the Air Force. Radia is targeting a first flight of its aircraft, called Windrunner, by the end of the decade, but it is still in a very aspirational stage at present.

Many questions also still remain about how the Air Force will ultimately proceed on the next-generation aerial refueling front.

“So thinking beyond the current KC-46 buy and the program extension, whatever that next tanker looks like, our Advanced Tanker System, it’s got to be connected. It’s got to be able to defend itself,” Lt. Gen. Tulley said at the roundtable. “But it begs the question: does it need to be manned? Could it be optionally manned? Could it be autonomous? Or is there a family of solutions maybe that would answer that question? So I do not believe that it has to be manned.”

The AMC head was responding to a specific question about how autonomy could play into the Air Force’s future aerial refueling plans, which included a reference ot the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone. The Navy just announced its first low-rate initial production contract for MQ-25s on Monday.

“I think you’re seeing that with the MQ-25 and the Navy’s work, but then, how do we, the U.S. Air Force, bring that to bear in scope, scale, and range?” Tulley continued. “An optionally manned or an unmanned tanker, at range, the ranges we need to operate at, it’s a very large aircraft. And we’re not yet to where we’re employing fully autonomous large aircraft, but the technology, I would say, is there and rapidly getting there if it’s not.”

The MQ-25 is another Boeing product, and that company has shown a rendering of a larger, land-based derivative in the past. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has also put forward several advanced tanker concepts in the past, including stealthy and potentially uncrewed designs.

“We will be going after how to make the tanker survive,” William Bailey, the Air Force official currently performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, had also told TWZ and other outlets at a separate roundtable at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference yesterday. Bailey was responding to a direct question about whether the service was moving away from the idea of a stealthy tanker as part of the ATS plan.

“So, lots of work around what do we do in the future for our tankers, and we spent a pretty dedicated effort to go through and look at what do we think those design solutions could look like,” Bailey also said. “We looked internally. We went out to industry, had those guys come back with their thoughts on how to provide a more survivable aircraft.”

“The stuff that was coming in for me might have been an incremental improvement, but [it was] not clear that that represented the next step, the next phase,” he added. “What you’ll see is we’ll take our efforts, and we’ll look at, hey, if the real question is tanker access, then let’s not constrain ourselves to just the aircraft itself and trying to make a stealthy tanker. We need a tanker to have access, so we’ll talk about all those systems that it would take to protect that tanker.”

Bailey said the question of operational “access” applied to next-generation discussions, as well.

As is the case with the Air Force’s airlift fleets, the service tankers are in high demand due to the conflict with Iran and other current operational requirements. Stress on the existing tanker force, compounded by the ever-advancing age of the KC-135s, has been a steadily growing point of concern for years now. U.S. military officials have long been drawing attention to the limits of available aerial refueling capacity to meet even routine peacetime demands. The Air Force, as well as the U.S. Navy, have also expanded their use of contractor-owned and operated tankers to perform certain non-combat aerial refueling missions to help ease this strain.

In the meantime, the Air Force is still pursuing upgrades for its existing airlift and tanker fleets, with heavy focus on increased network connectivity and improved self-protection capabilities.

Greater connectivity “can be a game changer, and it has been a game changer in Operation Epic Fury [against Iran],” Lt. Gen. Tulley said at today’s roundtable. “The ability for air crews to communicate, to coordinate tanker orbits and rendezvous, to pass threat information, to save lives and save aircraft has been everything we expected it to be and more.”

“We have MAF NEXUS that we’re pursuing. The goal is to have this on all mobility aircraft, whether they’re future-built and it’s incorporated, or it’s an add-on capability to existing aircraft,” he continued. “It brings edge compute, the ability to then employ AI [artificial intelligence] and much more computing core power forward on the aircraft, and it does network with the rest of the joint force and the Air Force’s battle management system.”

When it comes to new options for protecting existing tankers, “nothing’s off the table,” the AMC boss added. “Whether it’s [in the] electromagnetic spectrum, whether it’s kinetic self-defense, a layered approach, we’re looking at everything to come up with what might be the best system. But it’s got to be a system that we can afford, and it’s got to be one that we can put on all the aircraft we have and the ones we’re about to build.”

Using Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) or other types of drones to help provide localized defense for airlifters and tankers could be another option. The Air Force has already experimented with this, at least to a degree.

The Air Force is otherwise still clearly continuing to shape its future airlift and aerial fueling visions. As part of that work, the service is now at least considering the possibility of rebooting C-17 production.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF Assessing Feasibility Of Restarting C-17 Production As Part Of Its Future Airlift Vision appeared first on TWZ.

Yemen’s Houthi movement, formally known as Ansar Allah, has released imagery that it says shows the downing of a Royal Saudi Air Force F-15 fighter over Marib governorate. The material includes photos of the wreckage of an F-15 on the ground. At this stage, the fate of the two crew members is unclear. The incident comes amid a major escalation in fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

A video of what Ansar Allah says is the successful shootdown of the F-15 shows the typical ground-based forward-looking infrared (FLIR) systems we have seen in use by air defenses in Yemen previously, and, more recently, in Iran.

Onboard footage of a Houthi SAM system shooting down a Saudi F-15 overnight over Yemen’s Marib province. pic.twitter.com/6mh23B2Ovu

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 16, 2026

After a period of relative calm following the 2022 truce, fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Houthi forces making significant advances against Saudi-backed Yemeni government positions, including around the strategically important coastal areas of Marib and Taiz. The group has also stepped up missile and drone attacks against southern Saudi Arabia, targeting military and energy infrastructure while strangling the kingdom’s ability to move oil through the Red Sea. The Houthis have further declared the Bab el-Mandeb closed to Saudi oil traffic, directly challenging one of Riyadh’s key energy-export routes.

Prior to the release of imagery, earlier today the Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed that Houthi forces had shot down a Saudi F-15 while it was conducting operations in support of Saudi-backed forces in Marib. Saree said the aircraft was engaged by a locally manufactured surface-to-air missile, although he did not identify the weapon. Reuters likewise reported that the Houthis had claimed the shootdown but that the claim had not been independently verified.

Saree also claimed that Houthi air defenses subsequently engaged formations of Saudi F-15s and Eurofighter Typhoons that entered the area while attempting to locate the downed aircraft. According to the Houthi account, those aircraft were forced to withdraw. That portion of the claim has likewise not been independently verified.

Saudi Arabia has not, at the time of writing, publicly acknowledged the loss of an F-15. Reuters reported that the Saudi-led campaign had intensified considerably in recent days, with Saudi aircraft striking targets across Yemen while the Houthis have launched missiles and drones toward Saudi territory.

The aircraft appears to be an F-15SA, the most advanced variant of the Eagle operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force. Specifically, it appears to be tail number 5539, assigned to the 55th Squadron based at King Khalid Air Base.

The Royal Saudi Air Force received 84 of the new-build F-15SA. Meanwhile, the 68-strong fleet of earlier F-15S aircraft has been upgraded locally to a similar standard, also known as F-15SR (for Saudi Retrofit). Aircraft 5539 is understood to be among the latter.

The reported shootdown highlights the continuing threat posed by Houthi air defenses, which have proven considerably more capable and difficult to suppress than their improvised appearance might suggest.

As TWZ has previously detailed, the Houthi air-defense network includes mobile surface-to-air missile systems, repurposed infrared-guided R-73 and R-27 air-to-air missiles, and Iranian-derived systems such as the Saqr/358.

Of particular concern is the group’s use of passive infrared sensors for detection, tracking, and missile cueing. Unlike conventional fire-control radars, these sensors do not provide an aircraft’s electronic-warfare systems with an early warning that it has been detected or targeted. TWZ has noted that this combination of mobility and passive sensing can create a difficult problem even for highly sophisticated combat aircraft, with the Houthis having previously demonstrated the ability to threaten U.S. crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

That capability does not mean that Houthi air defenses constitute a conventional, integrated air defense network comparable to those operated by major state militaries. However, they can still be effective through a combination of concealment, mobility, passive detection, unconventional employment of missiles, and the difficult operating environment over Yemen.

Previous Saudi aircraft losses attributed to Houthi air defenses during the Yemen war from 2015 to 2022 include several helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and drones. Total Saudi losses to all causes in the conflict amount to around a dozen helicopters, five jets, and as many as 30 drones. A Saudi F-15 crashed in the Red Sea at the start of the war in 2015 and Eagles were also reportedly engaged and damaged by Houthi surface-to-air missiles in 2018, although they returned safely.

Video footage that emerged in 2021 shows Saudi troops on the ground watching an F-15 swoop in a relatively low level to knock down a Houthi Qasef-series suicide drone:

In the past, Houthi forces have come close to engaging U.S. F-35s and have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to bring down MQ-9 Reaper drones. If the Saudi F-15 loss is ultimately confirmed, determining precisely how the aircraft was detected, tracked, engaged, and hit could therefore provide valuable insight into how this unusual air defense architecture is being employed against Saudi and other combat aircraft.

As we discussed at the time, the clear risk posed by Houthi air defenses is likely the main factor behind Saudi employment of a Chinese-made short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) in the current fighting with Yemen.

العثور على بقايا صاروخ صيني من طراز DF-15A في اليمن. pic.twitter.com/af9mGNNxiA

— إيران بالعربية (@iraninarabic_ir) September 14, 2026

The timing of the reported shootdown is also notable. It comes amid a sharp escalation in the conflict, with Saudi Arabia conducting air operations against Houthi positions in Yemen and Ansar Allah launching missiles and drones toward targets inside Saudi Arabia. Reuters reported that the Houthis had attacked the Saudi Red Sea port of Yanbu and a southern airbase at Khamis Mushait, while Riyadh has reported intercepting Houthi drones.

The F-15 incident also follows a separate confrontation over an alleged Houthi drone attack near Mecca. Saudi authorities said their air defenses intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone south of Mecca before it entered the restricted airspace over the city. The Houthis denied targeting the holy city.

Meanwhile, there are reports that U.S. officials met representatives of the Houthis in Oman over the weekend, with the Houthis apparently telling the U.S. officials that they had no intention of attacking American vessels and that they remained committed to the 2025 ceasefire with ​the United States unless they stepped in on behalf of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom reportedly requested exactly this in recent weeks but was denied.

For the moment, the most that can be established from the available imagery is that a Saudi F-15 was destroyed, with Ansar Allah claiming responsibility.

This is a developing story and will be updated as additional imagery, official statements, or other independently verifiable information becomes available.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Houthis Claim Saudi F-15 Kill Over Yemen appeared first on TWZ.

Israel’s Rafael and Lockheed Martin are working to accelerate integration of the 1,000-pound-class SPICE standoff weapon with the Israeli Air Force’s F-35I Adir. The development could potentially open the door for the precision-guided munition to be offered to other Joint Strike Fighter operators.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced the effort September 15 during the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending. The work is being conducted as a joint project with Lockheed Martin at the U.S. contractor’s facilities in the United States and is expected to take several months.

AFA 2026: For the first time, Rafael's SPICE 1000 is being integrated on the F-35

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. is integrating its SPICE 1000 air-to-surface munition on the F-35 Adir fighter aircraft.

SPICE 1000 is an advanced air-to-surface munition capable of striking… pic.twitter.com/QOeNISGKFE

— Rafael Advanced Defense Systems (@RAFAELdefense) September 15, 2026

Rafael says the effort could eventually make the weapon available to other F-35 operators. “At a later stage, F-35 operators worldwide will be able to field SPICE 1000,” the company said.

The effort was previously referenced in U.S. government documentation before Rafael’s announcement. Published in August, the Pentagon F-35 Modernized Selected Acquisition Report identified the weapon as the “Israel-unique Smart, Precise Impact, Cost-Effective 1000B,” or SPICE 1000B, and said its integration was progressing “with a strategy to accelerate the implementation via a SPICE Lite process.”

The report does not explain what the “SPICE Lite” process entails.

SPICE — which stands for Smart, Precise Impact, and Cost-Effective — is a family of electro-optically guided standoff weapons developed by Rafael. The family includes SPICE 2000, SPICE 1000, and SPICE 250, with the numbers corresponding broadly to the weight class of the underlying warheads.

Based around a 1,000-pound-class bomb, SPICE 1000 uses pop-out wings to achieve a manufacturer-stated range of approximately 125 kilometers, or 78 miles. Rafael gives the weapon a claimed circular error probable of around three meters.

The glide bomb combines inertial and satellite-aided navigation with an electro-optical seeker. During the terminal phase, its seeker can compare the observed target area with stored imagery using scene-matching algorithms, allowing the weapon to continue its attack without relying exclusively on GPS. That feature allows it to engage targets autonomously, offering the launch aircraft a true ‘fire and forget’ capability, and provides resilience in GPS-denied or GPS-degraded environments.

SPICE can also be programmed to approach a target from a particular azimuth and impact angle. This provides flexibility in selecting the terminal attack geometry and can support steep attack profiles against targets where penetration from above is desirable.

SPICE 1000 is not a new Israeli capability. It has been operational with the Israel Air Force since 2017 and is already integrated with Israeli F-16I Sufa, F-16C/D Barak, F-15I Ra’am, and F-15 Baz fighters.

“SPICE 1000 has been sold to several countries and is in operational service with a number of air forces worldwide,” Rafael said. “It has served as a primary munition of the Israeli Air Force for several years, including extensive use in recent long-range operations flown from F-15 and F-16 aircraft.”

The Israeli Air Force has released footage showing SPICE weapons being used during recent operations, including imagery from the weapon’s own perspective during its terminal attack.

Israeli Air Force F-15 Bazs preparing for a strike on Iran, each carrying a pair of Spice 1000 glide bombs.

Notably, one of the F-15s, tail no. 450, took part in Operation Wooden Leg exactly 40 years ago, striking PLO targets in Tunisia. pic.twitter.com/FEy6PiDkdU

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 15, 2025

Combat validated.
The stand-off strike capability air forces are asking about. SPICE 250 at Farnborough.
Pinpoint accuracy against high-value targets. Real operational results.

Full details in our exhibition press release: https://t.co/FWYYvcM0Vw pic.twitter.com/lQV8sw32zN

— Rafael Advanced Defense Systems (@RAFAELdefense) July 22, 2026

Israel’s F-35I is already unusual within the international Joint Strike Fighter fleet. The IDF has developed and demonstrated an external Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) carriage capability, and said in March 2025 that the Israeli Adir was the only F-35 to have conducted operational strikes with an external weapons configuration. You can read more about that here.

However, according to The Jerusalem Post, the SPICE weapon is expected to be carried internally by F-35Is equipped with Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, hardware, which would maintain its low-observable configuration. Neither Rafael nor Lockheed Martin has publicly detailed the specific carriage configuration, aircraft modifications or software associated with the current integration effort.

The long-delayed TR-3 is a major upgrade to the F-35’s computing architecture and provides the processing infrastructure required for subsequent Block 4 capabilities. Israel received its first three F-35Is equipped with TR-3 hardware in January of this year.

Lockheed Martin describes Block 4 as the F-35 program’s “most significant evolution of F-35 capabilities to date,” encompassing more than 70 major upgrades, including increased weapons capacity, advanced electronic warfare capabilities, and improved target recognition.

It remains unclear if the SPICE 1000 integration itself requires the full Block 4 configuration.

The potential significance of the Israeli integration extends beyond the Israel Air Force. If SPICE 1000 ultimately becomes available to other F-35 operators, the completed Israeli integration could provide those countries with another pathway toward fielding a precision standoff weapon rather than requiring them to begin an integration effort entirely from scratch.

Integrating national weapons onto the F-35 can be a lengthy process. It involves not only the weapon itself, but aircraft software, interfaces, weapons-bay compatibility, flight testing, mission-system integration and certification within the U.S.-led F-35 program.

The United Kingdom’s experience with MBDA’s SPEAR 3 provides a good example of the challenges.

In 2022, the U.K. Ministry of Defence said that scheduled delivery dates for SPEAR 3 had been delayed because of “prioritisation in the overall F-35 development programme,” which is managed by the U.S.-led F-35 Joint Program Office.

The program has continued to progress, including F-35B integration work and flight testing. But in June 2026, the U.K. government said that completion of mission-systems integration and jettison trials remained part of a wider weapons-integration program and that SPEAR 3 integration and subsequent release to service would occur in the early 2030s.

The United Kingdom has consequently approved the acquisition of the GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II as an interim standoff weapon for the F-35B until SPEAR 3 enters service.

Nevertheless, another F-35 operator would not be able to adopt the Israeli SPICE integration without additional work. National configurations, software baselines, certification requirements, weapons procurement, and export approvals would still have to be addressed.

Already, however, aided by its uniquely configured test jet, Israel has demonstrated an unusual ability to integrate nationally developed capabilities onto its F-35I. This has been aided by privileged access to the Joint Strike Fighter’s closely guarded software codes.

A U.K. parliamentary report noted delays in integrating British weapons onto the F-35B while contrasting that with Israel’s ability to integrate domestic electronic warfare systems, sensors, and communications technology onto its Adir.

Meanwhile, Rafael and Lockheed Martin already have experience working together on the SPICE family.

The companies signed a teaming agreement in 2019 covering the joint development, marketing and manufacture of SPICE guidance kits for the U.S. market. In 2021, they expanded the agreement to include SPICE 250, including development for potential sales to the United States and Poland. With some unque capabilities, SPICE could be of particular interest to the U.S. military, especially as it seeks to leverage multiple sources of precision munitions.

The SPICE family also extends beyond the 1,000-pound-class weapon now being integrated with the F-35.

At the other end of the family is SPICE 250, a much smaller weapon designed around a 250-pound-class payload. It incorporates a man-in-the-loop capability that allows an operator to redirect the weapon during its flight and abort the attack if necessary.

Its smaller dimensions also allow substantially greater weapon carriage. Rafael has marketed configurations in which a fighter can carry as many as 16 SPICE 250 weapons.

SPICE 1000, by comparison, is a substantially heavier weapon intended to provide longer-range precision attack capability with a larger warhead.

The SPICE effort is taking place alongside several other Israeli initiatives aimed at extending the F-35I’s range and weapons capabilities.

The Pentagon’s F-35 documentation has referenced ongoing work on extended-range fuel tanks and electronic warfare pods for the Israeli Air Force, although it did not provide fielding dates.

In May 2026, Israel’s defense ministry awarded an extended-range capability development contract for the F-35I to Elbit Systems subsidiary Cyclone. The capability is intended to increase the aircraft’s radius of action and reduce its reliance on aerial refueling during long-range missions.

Israel has also announced a major expansion of its F-35I fleet, with plans to increase the number of aircraft from 50 to 100. The country is simultaneously expanding its forthcoming F-15IA fleet from 25 to 50 aircraft.

For the F-35I, SPICE 1000 adds a long-range strike option that pairs the aircraft’s low observability with substantial standoff range and a relatively heavy warhead. This offers a survivability advantage in increasingly contested environments, allowing attacks from farther outside capable air defense systems and under heavy electronic warfare conditions. This factor will only become more important as integrated air defense systems become more capable and the F-35 more detectable.

Exactly how the weapon will be integrated remains undisclosed. Rafael and Lockheed Martin have not announced the final carriage configuration, aircraft software requirements, flight-test schedule, or expected date for operational clearance.

At the same time, Rafael is explicitly positioning the effort as a potential pathway for SPICE 1000 to become available to the wider F-35 community. This would conceivably give other operators another option at a time when integrating a new standoff weapon onto the fighter can take years.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Israel Is Bringing SPICE 1000 Standoff Weapon To The F-35 appeared first on TWZ.

As both the Navy and the USAF were racing to field a new generation of advanced tactical jets, the seagoing service’s program hit a wall. A major reason behind this from the Pentagon was concern that the U.S. industrial base could not handle simultaneous final development and production of two extremely complex new fighter aircraft. This was a controversial justification that many had a hard time swallowing. The Navy’s program, dubbed F/A-XX, is supposedly back on and a down-select on who will build it is coming soon, but that concern appears to linger among at least one of the Department of War’s top acquisition officials.

Though he remains confident that the U.S. Air Force F-47 sixth-generation fighter will fly in the next two years, Air Force Gen. Dale R. White, Director, Critical Major Weapon Systems — the service’s leading weapons procurement advisor — remains concerned about the overall capacity of industry to provide the military with the aircraft it needs, including two new fighters. His comments were in response to questions about the Navy’s challenges in building its own sixth-gen fighter alongside F-47.

The concerns are “not unique” to the F-47 or the Navy’s program but the problem exists to various degrees across the industrial base too, White told reporters Tuesday during a media roundtable at the Air & Space Forces’ Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending.

White has a dual-hatted role, serving as the Pentagon’s top weapons procurement officer and as the senior acquisition advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force for all acquisition matters.

“We’re seeing it in multiple platforms,” said White, who did not elaborate. “And so what we’re having to do is, at some point, we’re having to make some trade space in between some of these.”

“I see Boeing making smart investments,” White said of the prime contractor of the F-47, selected for the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) ‘fighter’ initiative. “They have a lot of CAPEX [capital expenditure] that they’re pouring in, but we have to get through the process of the design piece, getting that completed and closed out. Then we all hit some major milestones with things like flight tests and software and those things.”

“Really, it’s just being able to manage the overall resourcing as it relates to number one, people resources,” the general added. “Number two, when you start getting into the production conversation, do we have enough capacity to be able to produce at that rate? And so, by and large, I have concerns. I have concerns about the capacity of our industrial base, but they are not unique to F-47 or to any program.”

As for the F-47, White said the program “continues to progress exceptionally well.”

“As you know, many, many years in tech maturation and risk reduction gave us a tremendous head start on this program,” White explained. “Extremely proud of what the team has done, what they continue to do each and every day. We are still absolutely on [the] path to be able to hit the mark of flying within this administration. So we see no issues in front of us right now.”

While the first example of the F-47 has been in production for about a year now, the Navy has yet to even select a prime contractor for its next generation fighter. The current competitors for the F/A-XX are Boeing and Northrop Grumman. A decision was supposed to have been made by last month.

“The F/A-XX program remains on track, and we have no further information to provide at this time,” a Navy official told us last week.

Despite intervention from Congress, the next-generation carrier-based fighter has remained in question since the Pentagon moved to effectively shelve the program last year.

In response to a question from TWZ earlier this year, the Chief of Naval Operations acknowledged the uncertainty over the F/A-XX program.

“One of the challenges we’re seeing is, not only [are] our peer competitors improving their capability for anti-air, either air-to-air or surface-to-air, but the lower cost of entry of very capable weapons is also making more players on the field in which that level of stealth and technology is required,” Adm. Daryl Caudle told us back in April at the Sea-Air-Space 2026 exposition. “So this is not about the need for a peer adversary. This is just having an aircraft that can operate with a level of uncertainty and with the acceptable level of risk.”

With Boeing as a finalist, it is also possible that F/A-XX could be a variant of the F-47. As we noted in a past story, the Boeing render for its F/A-XX concept is remarkably similar to artwork for its F-47.

Likely a navalized F-47 variant as expected. https://t.co/4lZkpUjqfz

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) August 28, 2025

Last year, Steve Parker, Boeing Defense and Space CEO, said he didn’t see a problem with his company building both jets stating that this had been part of the strategy all along.

If this is the case, the company’s claim that it would not have a problem building both the Navy and Air Force next-generation fighters would make more sense. There are a number of advantages when it comes to establishing a high-degree of commonality between F/A-XX and F-47, although there would also be challenges, especially when it comes to getting the most out of a design that was not meant to operate from a carrier deck and scaling production up for both services. There is already significant sharing of elements of both the Navy’s and Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter programs. So commonality in some subsystems and interoperability are already baked in.

We should hopefully finally get a clearer picture in the coming weeks about the status of the F/A-XX and possibly the answer to who will actually build it, which will give us a better idea of what the industrial base impact actually will be.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post Industrial Base Concerns Over Building F/A-XX And F-47 Remain: Top Pentagon Procurement Officer appeared first on TWZ.

U.S. Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) are set to take part in a large-force employment (LFE) exercise for the first time later this year. Sending CCAs to the next iteration of the Emerald Flag test exercise is another important new stepping stone toward fielding the drones operationally.

“We have not yet done a LFE with these [CCAs], for real. The first one is going to be Emerald Flag. That’s in December,” Lt. Col. Lyndon “OTTO” Bartlett, Director of Operations for the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, said earlier today. “That’ll be our first tip dip of the toe in an actual force integration.”

Bartlett was speaking during a panel at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, at which TWZ is in attendance. The EOU has been leading Air Force efforts to lay the groundwork for future CCA operations. The unit has already been conducting various types of testing using prototypes of the General Atomics FQ-42A Vengeance and Anduril FQ-44 Fury. The Air Force announced in June that its initial operational CCA fleet would consist of a mix of FQ-42s and FQ-44s.

The Air Force’s 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida first began hosting Emerald Flag exercises in 2020. The exercise series has historically focused heavily on demonstrating new and improved aerial networking architectures and other command and control capabilities, which will be especially critical elements for future CCA operations. Emerald Flag, with its not purely limited to the air domain, is often tied in with other large force test exercise series. Other branches of the U.S. military regularly take part, as well.

It is worth noting here that Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, a CCA-type design, did take part in Valiant Shield 26, another LFE exercise, earlier this year. The EOU was also involved. However, the MQ-28, originally developed for the Royal Australian Air Force, is not officially part of the Air Force’s CCA program at present.

Emerald Flag in December “will, in OTTO’s mind, be the first time that we will ever do some CCA end-to-end chain [demonstration] live. That’s the first time we’ll ever be integrated in a fourth- and fifth-gen combined OCA [offensive counter air] push,” Lt. Col. Bartlett added. “It’ll be small, but those type [sic] of building blocks are where I think you get the intangibles like trust in the CCA.”

“Those learnings are going to be just as valuable as the technical, [like] does the radio work properly? Does the button I push to say ‘target’ work properly?” he continued.

U.S. military officers, including tactical jet pilots, regularly talk about the critical need for trust in autonomous systems to perform as expected when directed in future operations. Establishing that trust, and doing so in real-world environments, is seen as foundational to answering larger outstanding questions about how CCA-type drones will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated, let alone employed tactically.

The EOU, together with other partners within the U.S. military and industry, have been working for years now to validate and improve autonomous capabilities in the virtual realm, and then test in more limited real-world contexts. Virtualized testing does offer immense benefits for rapid iterative development of the underlying software ahead of live demonstrations.

“If it’s in a simulated environment, it’s immediate,” Lt. Col. Bartlett said during the panel when asked about the “feedback loop” in testing the EOU is already taking part in. In that environment, “when the mission autonomy iterations are happening, our guys are literally with the programmers … They give the feedback, and if it’s possible to do immediately, they take that feedback. If not, then they work on it on the next turn of the software.”

Real-world testing, of course, offers opportunities to explore additional aspects of future CCA operations, including when it comes to loading weapons and maintenance. A key component of the Air Force’s vision for CCA employment is being able to forward deploy the drones to far-flung locations, including airstrips with limited infrastructure and access to logistics chains. Rapid, distributed deployments like this are central to still-evolving concepts of operations currently referred to collectively as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). The EOU has been involved in at least two rounds of ACE-focused testing this year, one at Edwards Air Force Base in California in April and another at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada in July. TWZ was the first to report on the latter event.

During the panel today, Lt. Col. Bartlett also talked more generally about work EOU has done to date. This has included exploring “sortie generation, how easy they are to maintain, [and] how small a footprint could be.”

“We’ve been pleasantly surprised. The jets are extremely easy to maintain,” he continued. “We’re at a one-to-one maintainer-to-airplane ratio, which is crazy small.”

With “CCAs, [it] seems like because they’re a little bit simpler, because their role is so focused, what we found is that just about any – not just about, but we found that any AFSC [Air Force Specialty Code; alphanumeric codes used to identify specific jobs within this service] can be trained to generate sorties to load weapons, and we’ve done some of those things already,” he further explained. “It’s our job to bring them [CCAs] out and make sure that, beyond the technical specifications of it, that we’re kind of experimenting with the more complex things like logistics, and C2 [command and control], and how do we battle manage these things.”

The head of the EOU did acknowledge challenges that still have to be surmounted. This notably includes hurdles currently imposed by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations on the operation of fully uncrewed aircraft, even by the U.S. military, within U.S. airspace. This is further compounded by the explicit intention to operate CCAs with far more minimal human engagement compared to most existing drones.

“Mission autonomy is going to be the secret sauce that lets these things become decisive or not, and we’ll know that over the next couple years as that develops,” according to Bartlett. “If I were to identify the two biggest problems from the trenches of the EOU, [one] is FAA integration or policy implications to an autonomous airplane.”

“So these things don’t have pilots. They’re not RPAs [remotely-piloted aircraft]. They’re not manned fighters. They have no pilots,” he continued. “Our system is not set up for that, and that is a challenge that we are finding extremely hard to navigate through, and to not go around, but to make a policy.”

“We need to make sure the Air Force is ready for these things, to set policies that make sure the enterprise and the country is [sic] ready to receive these, and internalize an autonomous fighter that does not have a pilot that is running on a mission autonomy agent that doesn’t listen to ATC [air traffic control],” he added.

The second problem, per Bartlett, is making sure the Air Force develops new internal policies and doctrine that are not “copy and pastes from old regulations” that do not take into account the specific nuances that CCAs will bring. What the service needs is “something that enables us to move quickly with these things, to weigh what we need, and to experiment with novel types of air superiority.”

All of this circles back to the discussion of trust in autonomous capabilities. It also speaks to the potential for future operations where CCAs could operate far more independently.

“It’s in the name that they’re collaborative,” Bartlett said. “Taking them out of that could technically be effective, but would not enhance the joint force the way that we see a collaborative, integrated force package to be.”

“What we need autonomously to do is written down. I won’t discuss the particulars in this forum, but we know what we need it to do, or we know what we think it really needs to do,” he noted. “We’ve structured our experimentation game plan to analyze ‘can it do those things?,’ and if not, then how do they need to be different? And then as they iterate on it, which we’ve already seen a couple times, we get that at the EOU, we get the new version down, we fly it again. Is it fixed? Yes or no.”

Some members of industry are clearly envisioning futures with different definitions of ‘collaborative’ that could lean more toward independent operations involving highly autonomous drones.

What “the whole entire program is trying to do is [figure out] what is the requirement to put out into the field to get to the warfighter and to start operating this thing this [sic; in] real time?” Robert “Otis” Winkler, Vice President of Corporate Development & National Security Programs at dronemaker Kratos, another one of the panelists, said. “The collaborative part of this makes it a much easier, I think, technical problem to be able to limit and grow the autonomy as you field this.”

“I think eventually we may see these aircraft utilized as collaborative aircraft, but not in conjunction with your traditional pulsed operation, but in support of that pulsed operation when the pulse isn’t there yet. But I do think that that is a bit of a stretch goal that’s going to be down the road.”

CCAs “have been designed really around increasing both survivability and lethality of current force packages. So there are many manned platforms that you would describe in the exact same fashion,” Jason Levin, Senior Vice President for Air Dominance and Strike at Anduril, who was also on the panel, said. He was responding here to a specific question about whether his use of the term “fighter” to describe these drones implied more emphasis on independent operations.

All of this underscores the importance of bringing CCAs to Emerald Flag in December, as well as other events in the future offering opportunities to see how the drones really fit in with other crewed platforms. The Air Force is hoping to start seeing CCAs enter operational service around the end of the decade, and have 500 of them, at least, in inventory by 2032.

During the panel today, the EOU’s Lt. Col. Bartlett made clear that “we’re going to learn a lot over the next couple years.”

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF’s Fighter Drones To Make Debut In A Large Scale Exercise appeared first on TWZ.

The top U.S. Air Force officer in Europe, who also serves as the NATO Allied Air Command leader, said he has been tasked with enacting new alliance plans to defend against cruise missiles and drones. He was responding to questions about a drone that NATO had to shoot down after it entered Lithuanian airspace overnight. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday morning that the incident was “part of a broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe, testing our readiness and our resolve.”

The drone incursion into Lithuania took place against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine and amid a spate of so-called ‘hybrid’ or ‘gray zone’ actions Moscow has been accused of carrying out throughout Europe, including a recent attempted drone attack on the Leipzig-Halle airport in Germany.

We now know that Russia is responsible for the attempted explosive attack at Leipzig airport. Russia's repeated hybrid attacks on Germany and Europe are unacceptable. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/o3vBjgpeb1

— German Embassy Washington (@GermanyinUSA) September 1, 2026

“I don’t know what’s in the mind of Putin or his fielded forces about those one-way attack drones or even cruise missiles, like we’ve seen enter Polish airspace just a few months ago. In July, we had an AS-23 cruise missile enter Poland,” Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe/U.S. Air Forces Africa (USAFE), and Commander of the Allied Air Command, said in response to a question about the drone shootdown over Lithuania. He was speaking during a media roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending.

Hinds added that while he doesn’t “know the why behind” the drone incursion into Lithuania, he has been tasked by U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, who serves as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), “to fully implement EVA [Enhanced Vigilance Activity] Eastern Sentry and now its Standing Defense Plan 12000, which gives the nations the capabilities that they need to defend their airspace against either one-way attack drones like the one that you described last night, or a cruise missile.”

EVA Eastern Sentry is a mission NATO stood up in September 2025 after “an unprecedented number of Russian drones and planes violated the airspace of several NATO Allies,” according to the alliance. “Allies are contributing additional capabilities and assets to NATO’s deterrence and defense – for instance, more fighter jets, helicopters, transport aircraft, air defense systems, surveillance aircraft and frigates – and improving the coordination of these assets through NATO.”

Standing Defense Plan 12000 is a new plan for integrated air and missile defense across the alliance. Grynkewich introduced the concept during testimony to Congress in March.

Hinds acknowledged that Russia could be testing the alliance.

“It’s not about the small UASs; that’s typically a national responsibility, and it could be probing,” the Air Force general noted. “Regardless of the intent behind it, what we want to be prepared for is the second that a one-way attack drone or a cruise missile is first and foremost detected – hopefully well before it enters NATO territory – we want to know it. We want to know where it’s coming from. We want to have the capability to sense it. We want to be able to have the C2 [command and control] systems to be able to decide what to do about it, and then have the right kit to be able to act.”

Despite an integrated air and missile defense system that includes Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries, NATO currently is primarily “using air power” against drones and cruise missiles “and that’s not putting us on the right side of the cost curve,” Hinds stated. “But we want to get there.”

Using NATO jets to take down drones “is very effective, just like what you saw last night, and many other times,” but not necessarily efficient, Hinds explained. 

“I think there’s been at least five other cases of allied nations providing air power to shoot down one-way attack drones,” he proffered. “I want to get to the point where we’re doing it efficiently, using lower-cost interceptors, hopefully ground-based, and in some cases air-based that are cheaper to use, so we’ll see what the intent may be. Intelligence organizations are going to provide us with that intelligence later on, but I just don’t know yet.”

You can see one of those NATO jet engagements with drones in the following video.

NATO airpower in action this morning, safeguarding Latvian airspace. pic.twitter.com/Ugzbx8aaZS

— Marko Mihkelson (@markomihkelson) June 8, 2026

It should be noted that Europe is starting to follow the American lead in using less expensive laser-guided, air-to-air rockets as drone-killing weapons. TWZ was the first to report about the use of 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) rockets by the U.S. The U.K. Royal Air Force announced in May of this year that its Typhoons were now equipped with APKWS rockets while the French recently tested their own 68mm laser-guided rockets from Rafale fighters.

The Defence Procurement Agency has successfully completed integration testing of 68 mm laser-guided rockets on the Rafale fighter jet. The time between the contract being awarded for this new capability and initial operational capability being achieved was less than 8 months. pic.twitter.com/rR2Nij9EzY

— French Aid to Europe (@aidefranceukr) July 13, 2026

As the threats have evolved, NATO has “transitioned away from air policing, and we’ve transitioned to air defense for some specific reasons,” the general pointed out. “One is readiness. Air policing is a readiness decrementing mission that the alliance has done for years. There’s also an assurance mission that we did for 32 nations. That’s transitioned to air defense now. Air defense means we have the right kit, multi-domain, to be able to be put in the right place based on indications, warnings, or real threats, like you saw last night, inside of the Baltic nations, to be able to respond decisively and quickly.”

“There’s also a deterrence value there,” Hinds added. “So if Russia does fly a one-way attack drone or a cruise missile, they know that we’re going to be in the right spot to be able to detect it and then defend against it.”

“These are limited incursions, right? Small numbers. Here’s what I see: hybrid activities may, in fact, only be one of the few levers that Putin has available to him, because he sees that he does not have an advantage in geography, domain, or readiness,” Hinds suggested.

“Think about that,” he urged. “So what are we seeing? We’re not seeing a massing of forces across the opposite side of Finland, a new NATO nation. We’re not seeing a massing of forces whatsoever in any domain opposite of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia. You’re seeing a significant number of one-way attack drones in the Black Sea targeting Ukraine. Some of them are entering Romania. What you’re not seeing is a direct confrontation in geography. We’re not seeing direct competition in domains. And I think Putin knows that we are ready. I know he knows that we’re a defensive alliance. I know he knows that we have an advantage in every domain against them, and I think that’s likely why you’re seeing things like what you’re seeing with hybrid activity.”

Though below the level of armed conflict, these Russian activities raise the potential for something worse, Hinds posited.

“The risk about hybrid activity, from my perspective, is it could lead to escalation, and that’s where I hope that we get back towards deterrence again, and that the nations they’re going to decide to do what they want to do when it comes to these hybrid activities,” the general said. “Some of them are law enforcement. Some of them are military responses, and that’s up to the nations to decide how they’re going to deal with that. Not me.”

“But what I owe General Grynkewich is to ensure that we are demonstrating our deterrence each and every day, and we’re doing that effectively across all domains,” Hinds added. “And to ensure that Putin knows that if he tries something against the alliance, that we will be there, and we’re ready to win decisively if challenged.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post NATO Air Commander Details Thinking Behind The Alliance’s New Air Defense Plan appeared first on TWZ.

New imagery shared with TWZ by Anduril shows its YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) configured with air-to-ground weapons, underscoring the fact that the CCA could take on an air-to-ground role in the future in addition to its current air-to-air focus. Yesterday, Anduril executives revealed that the company had begun integration and fit checks for a range of air-to-ground weapons, although they confirmed to us that those weapons had not yet been flight-tested aboard Fury.

The YFQ-44A is one of two aircraft selected by the Air Force for its CCA Increment 1 program, alongside General Atomics’ YFQ-42A Vengeance. The service’s stated priority for the initial aircraft is air dominance, and Anduril says the production FQ-44 will have four external hardpoints capable of carrying four AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. The YFQ-44A, which currently has two underwing pylons for two AMRAAMs, has already conducted a live AIM-120 firing as part of testing with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit.

The new imagery, however, points toward a substantially broader weapons envelope, with the aircraft shown carrying different air-to-ground stores on its two external stations. The weapons are shown fitted to the aircraft during a ground-based fit check, an important step in the integration process before captive-carry and, ultimately, live-release testing, if Anduril and the USAF choose to go down that route.

During a recent roundtable with reporters yesterday at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending, Anduril’s Jason Levin, senior vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, and Erin Simpson, vice president for Strategy for Air Dominance and Strike, said the company had already begun integration and fit checks of 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), and low-cost cruise missiles. Pods for 2.75-inch guided or unguided rockets are also seen fitted to the aircraft. In each case, the stores are mounted on a twin adaptor rack.

Furthermore, Anduril’s plans extend to testing the Fury with other air-to-air weapons and targeting pods.

Importantly, the diversity of weapons will give Fury a range of potential missions beyond high-end air-to-air combat, including counter-UAS, counter-cruise-missile, and air-to-ground or air-to-surface strike missions.

“We’ve begun integration and fit checks of a lot of other munitions,” an Anduril executive said. “We’ve done 500-pound guided bombs. We’ve done Small Diameter Bombs.”

The company said it had also begun engineering work to integrate its Barracuda 500 offering for the Air Force’s emerging low-cost cruise-missile effort.

It should be noted that giving the YFQ-44— or YFQ-42A — the ability to deliver a JDAM or SDB against a predetermined fixed target is not particularly complex. This type of austere air-to-ground capability should be relatively straightforward to add, providing a useful secondary strike function without requiring the aircraft to take on the far more demanding requirements associated with dynamic targeting or more sophisticated air-to-ground missions. This could also allow for these increment one CCAs to be used independently as air-to-ground ‘weapons trucks’ if their air-to-air assistance isn’t needed.

When the production FQ-44 arrives, it will have four hardpoints, compared with the two currently fitted to the YFQ-44A. Anduril says loading all four stations with AIM-120s for the Air Force’s air-dominance mission would reduce the range of the aircraft but would not require a larger engine or otherwise push the aircraft outside its basic takeoff, landing, climb, and flight-envelope requirements.

While the Air Force’s initial CCA requirement is heavily focused on air dominance, the same aircraft could potentially be configured for different missions by changing its external stores and sensors. Anduril is already positioning Fury as something more than a single-purpose “missile truck.”

That flexibility could become increasingly important as the Air Force considers how CCAs will be employed alongside crewed fighters. During a July Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) exercise at Creech Air Force Base, Fury flew in the same airspace as crewed fighters and other CCAs while Air Force personnel operated its Mission Autonomy system. Anduril says the aircraft has also flown in formation alongside F-35s, although the fighters were not yet controlling Fury.

The company is now working toward what it calls “quarterback integration,” in which a crewed aircraft will direct autonomous aircraft as part of a larger combat formation. Anduril says that work has already progressed through hardware- and software-in-the-loop environments and onto the aircraft itself, with live testing expected in the near term.

A Fury operating under the direction of an F-35 could potentially carry air-to-air missiles for counter-air missions, while other aircraft in the formation could be configured for strike or other effects. Alternatively, the same autonomous aircraft could be reconfigured for a different mission before being dispersed to another operating location. Having four pylons would also give the production Fury greater scope to undertake “swing-role” missions, flexing between prosecuting air and surface targets as required.

The July EOU exercise also demonstrated a rapid “hot reload” capability, with two Air Force personnel replacing an AIM-120 on a running Fury and reducing the turnaround between sorties to single-digit minutes. The demonstration was intended to show how CCAs could be rearmed and returned to the fight without the large maintenance and ground-support footprint associated with traditional combat aircraft. This will be vital as the Air Force integrates CCAs into its Agile Combat Employment concept, in which the drones can be dispersed across multiple operating locations rather than relying on a single large ground footprint.

Also speaking yesterday at the Air & Space Forces’ Air, Space and Cyber Symposium was Air Force Chief of Staff Kenneth Wilsbach, who confirmed that the service hasn’t necessarily made any decisions on Increment 2 of the CCA program yet, but it could include air-to-ground capabilities.

“We’re going through some thought processes about what Increment 2 should be able to do. Increment 1 is air-to-air, so do we want air-to-ground? Maybe, maybe not. Do we want it to have more sensors? Do we want it to be a lot cheaper? Do we want it to be more attritable or expendable, or do we want it to be more exquisite? Do we want shorter range or longer range? Do we want something that can be dropped from another platform, or does it take off and land by itself?”

“These are all considerations,” Wilsbach continued. “It’s still a bit early to make any definitive decisions on that, especially before we really get our hands on the current Increment 1 aircraft and learn from them.”

It’s also important to note that export customers for Fury may demand an air-to-ground capability set, especially if they will only be buying a limited number of CCA types. Having this option ready to go is relevant to prospects beyond the U.S., which are certainly growing.

Fury’s air-to-ground weapons work is part of a broader effort to make the aircraft a flexible combat system rather than simply an uncrewed air-defense adjunct for crewed fighters. The Air Force’s immediate priority may be air dominance, but the weapons integration underway suggests that the same four hardpoints could eventually support a much wider range of missions. This weapons flexibility could ultimately be central to the broader CCA concept, especially as the Air Force works out what it wants Increment 2 to deliver.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post YFQ-44A Fury Has Been Fit Checked With Air-To-Ground Munitions appeared first on TWZ.

Faced with a growing threat to their bases and personnel from missiles and drones and some recent hard-learned lessons, two top Air Force officials on Monday announced plans to increase protection. The statements were made during the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending. They were delivered as the service is seeking to improve its organic ability to defend its bases and has developed new doctrine to do so. 

The war against Iran exposed gaps in how the U.S. can provide effective, sustained air defenses for its foreign installations and there are major concerns about a future fight against a peer competitor like China or Russia. Drone incursions at home have raised alarms about domestic base protection as has the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The following video shows a fatal Iranian attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan in July.

Video captures the moment that several Iranian medium to intermediate-range ballistic missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan overnight, killing at least two and injuring several other American Servicemembers. pic.twitter.com/cJz39E1LvP

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 18, 2026

“For decades, American air and space power has often operated from a position of sanctuary. Those days are over,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said during a keynote speech. “We can no longer treat point defense as a side hustle. We must make it a core function of air and space power.”

He acknowledged the widespread damage Iran caused to U.S. bases and suggested that lack of base defense played a large role.

“So, if we had more robust base defense, perhaps those bases wouldn’t have been as damaged as they were,” the general admitted. “Look at Israel; they have a significantly layered, very robust defense of their country, and they didn’t take that many hits. Very few, in fact, and that shows you what a good defensive system can do, which can help you to operate not quite with impunity, but almost, and you can just keep generating air power, and your defensive systems take care of the incoming.”

Wilsbach offered some concrete suggestions about how to make improvements. 

“First, we will establish the point defense weapon system, bringing together kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to secure our air bases,” the general said. He did not offer any specifics. 

While Wilsbach offered no details about what a point defense weapons system would entail, we recently wrote that the Air Force is seeking an anti-aircraft gun system to help defend its air bases around the world from drones and cruise missiles. Introduced via a Request for Information (RFI) recently posted on the government’s contracting website, the gun system concept is part of a larger Air Force effort to play a greater role in air base defense via ground-based air defenses (GBADs). This role is largely performed by the U.S. Army, most notably with surface-to-air missile systems like Patriot and the Humvee-based Avenger system. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system can also provide broader area defense against incoming ballistic missiles. Other short-range systems optimized to swat down drones and even incoming rockets include the Centurion Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar (C-RAM) system, Coyote counter-drone interceptors and more.

The Air Force currently has no such systems. Now it is set on changing that.

The Air Force is also looking at directed energy weapons like lasers for force protection and especially for defending bases overseas. While gaining traction across the services due in large measure to the much lower cost of delivering effects, these systems are still works in progress.

It’s one thing to have equipment, but another to have experts that know how to use it, Wilsbach noted.

“Second, we have established a new career field of point defense airmen,” he added. “This new career field will be operational in two years. Together, these two new initiatives will strengthen our defenses, reinforce our ability to generate air and space power under fire, and protect our greatest advantage: our airmen and guardians.”

“Protecting the force and generating combat power are inseparable,” Wilsbach explained. “We need our airmen trained, equipped, and ready to fight from the opening moments of a conflict.”

“Don’t you think we ought to have them at every base?” he suggested when asked about point defenders during a media engagement at the symposium. “Because if every base is going to be threatened, we have to have somebody that knows how to defend it. So, obviously, that’s a long-term objective. But what I’ll tell you for right now is we’re going to develop the career field and push it forward to the critical bases that need protecting most, and then we’ll expand it beyond there.”

Though he wants the Air Force to come up with new defensive systems and personnel with the know-how to operate them, Wilsbach is not quite as sold on building out hardened aircraft shelters (HAS). This is his long-standing position that he reiterated on Monday.

“If you know where you’re going to fight from, hardened shelters aren’t that bad of an idea,” the general posited. “Deeply buried are even better. But if you are like us, and we don’t necessarily know where we’re going to fight from, if you build a hardened shelter and you don’t happen to be there, then you perhaps wasted that money.”

“So, given a resource-constrained environment, I would like to put my dollars in systems that can go anywhere in the world and protect you with basically the same level of security by shooting down incoming rounds versus making a hardened shelter that is impervious to an attack,” Wilsbach explained. “You have to put it 200 or 300 feet underground. Any hardened shelter that you show me that’s above the ground, I can blow up. So unless it’s really deeply buried, and then if it is, it’s expensive. And so that’s my logic: the best bang for the buck.”

To speed up the fielding of defensive systems, the service is interested in building out a procurement process specifically designed to develop weapons and other equipment needed to defend bases.

“How do you make sure that [airmen] have the kit they need to do the job?” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink asked rhetorically at a separate symposium session.

The Air Force, he said, is considering creating a new base defense Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE). The service created PAEs at the beginning of the year as part of an overhaul of its acquisition process ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. 

“The creation of PAEs is a central element of that direction,” according to an Air Force memo on the topic. “By organizing acquisition leadership around portfolios of capability, rather than discrete programs alone, the Department seeks to improve integration, decision speed, and outcome-focused execution across the acquisition enterprise.”

Meink acknowledged that there are challenges to creating a new PAE, most notably the overhead cost of establishing a new office with its associated personnel and infrastructure.

“Probably not going to do it right away, but obviously I think we’re on a path to something like that in the future,” the secretary suggested. “But there definitely has to be a continually increasing focus on making sure we can defend our airmen and guardians wherever they are in the world. This is not just an overseas problem; it’s a U.S. problem as well.”

Though we have been raising the alarm for years about the need for domestic base protection, the issue came into sharp focus in December 2023 after Langley Air Force Base in Virginia was beset by mysterious drone incursions for much of that month. The nature of those flights, which we were the first to report, remains publicly unknown. Since then there have been incursions at several other bases in the U.S., including Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home of B-52 Stratofortress bombers and nuclear weapons storage facilities, and a key part of the airborne leg of America’s nuclear triad. There have also been numerous incursions over U.S. bases in Europe, many of which we were the first to report.

As we noted earlier in this story, the U.S. is already facing a challenge defending against Iranian threats. A war with China would be more devastating and, when it comes to the Air Force protecting its bases, require more robust defenses and a lot more of them at many more locations. At the same time, the Air Force is still very early in the process of taking on more responsibility for protecting its assets.

Meanwhile, the Army has its issues when it comes to air defense. Its existing Patriot battalions have already been shown to be worryingly inadequate to meet heavy existing operational demands, something TWZ has been calling attention to for years now. We have also been raising concerns for a long time about its lack of SHORADS.

For the Air Force, recognizing the problem and taking steps to fix it are important steps. Whether these are the right approaches is something we will keep an eye on.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post Air Force Announces New Plans To Take Over Defending Its Own Bases From Aerial Attack appeared first on TWZ.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach offered some new insights on Monday into the challenges faced by airmen during Operation Epic Fury as Iranian missiles and drones rained down on them. His comments came during a keynote speech at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending. 

“Since becoming the chief, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with airmen throughout CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command],” said Wilsbach, who assumed the position in November. “I have walked flight lines, visited maintenance hangars, and stood inside operations centers where young Americans were managing missions overhead. Let me tell you about a few courageous airmen I met on my recent trip to the Middle East. They told me about their experience on the flight line during an attack.”

Burning Hangar

“As missiles were inbound, airmen sprinted toward bunkers,” the service chief said, without providing details about which base. “Moments later, a missile struck nearby in a hangar, and the aircraft inside burst into flames. The bunker withstood the blast, but the force of the impact damaged the door so badly it wouldn’t open, trapping the airmen inside.”

“Picture the scene,” Wilsbach explained. “Fire was spreading, an aircraft was burning only feet away, their teammates were trapped inside, and they had no way out. Despite the danger, airmen ran toward the flames.”

“A security forces NCO grabbed a pry bar and forced the door open,” he continued. “Calmly communicated with the airmen trapped inside. Seconds later, the ejection seat on the burning aircraft ignited, sending glass and metal fragments through the air. Finally, the door gave way, and the airmen escaped and ran for cover.”

“Wherever I went, I saw airmen with that steely-eyed look of warriors, determined to get the mission done and protect their fellow airmen,” the chief noted. “More than 30,000 airmen deployed in support of Epic Fury to a dozen locations. They served alongside soldiers, sailors, Marines, Guardians, and Coalition partners.”

Launching F-15Es Under Fire

“Operation Epic Fury will be studied for its scale, precision, and speed,” said Wilsbach. “Over 38 days of combat operations, the Joint Force struck more than 13,000 military objectives. Five hundred aircraft executed 10,000 sorties, an average of more than 250 sorties every day. Our airmen accomplished this through 1,200 alarm reds while executing 48 airfield repairs and completing more than 420 reportable explosive ordnance disposal, long lonely walks.”

“That walk is exactly what the name suggests,” Wilsbach proffered. “EOD technician leaving a place of relative safety and approaching a suspected bomb or unexploded munition to render it safe for everyone else.”

“Behind those numbers were thousands of decisions made by airmen who had to keep the mission moving while the enemy was actively trying to stop them,” Wilsbach stated. “One was Garrett, a staff sergeant F-15E crew chief from East Texas. He joined the Air Force to travel and see the world. We sure allowed him to achieve that goal, but I’m not sure the Middle East was exactly what he had in mind. On the second day of Epic Fury, Garrett was on the flight line launching four Strike Eagles when alarm red sounded. Airmen around him started running for shelter. Garrett’s adrenaline spiked. He knew exactly what that alarm meant. Danger was inbound, but his launch was not complete.”

“A young airman was working with him, and Garrett sent him to the bunker,” the service chief continued. “Garrett stayed. The rest of the team was separated, so he armed the weapons and cleared the jet. Proceed… While everyone else ran for cover, he decided to stay. Garrett understood why those Strike Eagles were in theater. He knew they were one of their best lines of defense, so he stayed until the job was done. Only after the last fighter taxied out, Garrett finally took cover. Later, when someone asked why, his answer was simple: his fellow airmen needed those airplanes in the air.”

Swatting Down Drones Under Fire

“Hundreds of miles away, two senior airmen, Shanae and Nolan, tracked a swarm of enemy drones headed toward their base,” Wilsbach pointed out. “Shanae joined the Air Force to provide for her family. During the opening days of Epic Fury, she found herself protecting another family – the hundreds of airmen depending on her.”

“People sprinted for shelter as alarm red announced an incoming attack, but Shanae and Nolan stayed focused on the screens in front of them because every inbound track could be a weapon aimed at their teammates,” the general said. “Shanae is 27 years old, and Nolan is 21. Think about the responsibility we placed on these two airmen. Hundreds of lives depended on them to identify the threats and employ countermeasures. Every second mattered. The stakes were life and death. Together, Shanae and Nolan achieved more than 10 surface-to-air kills that night, defeating threat after threat before it could reach the airmen they were protecting. There were moments when they were afraid, and most people would be, but courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is overcoming it. They stayed locked on, trusted their training, and did the job everyone around them was counting on.”

Picking Up The Pieces After An Attack

“Peter is a senior airman from New York who spent nine months in the Middle East as an air transportation airman,” Wilsbach said. “With his team, he moved heavy ordnance, prepared missile systems, and downloaded Patriot equipment, while ballistic missiles and attack drones repeatedly target their airfield.”

“One of those attacks became very personal,” the service chief noted. “Enemy fire destroyed Peter’s living quarters and nearly everything he had brought from home. Imagine coming back after a 12-hour shift to find the wreckage of your hooch. The few pieces of home he carried halfway around the world were gone. Peter’s response told me everything I needed to know about him. He said that his possessions could be replaced, but the mission could not.”

Keeping The Reapers Flying

“More than 4,000 dynamic targets had to be found, identified, validated, and engaged,” Wilsbach said. “Remotely piloted aircraft, airborne ISR platforms, cyber operators, space professionals, and countless others turn enormous amounts of data into intelligence commanders could use.”

“Suit is a first lieutenant with a family tradition of excellence,” Wilsbach said of one MQ-9 Reaper pilot. “Both of his grandfathers served in the Army. I’m sure they wanted a better life for their kids, which is why his parents chose the Air Force. Today, Suit flies the MQ-9 and carries his family tradition forward. He also scored a perfect 100 on its physical assessment this year, so apparently excellence runs in the family.”

“MQ-9s flown by pilots like Suit supplied critical ISR and kinetic strike capabilities, launching them from bases within range of enemy fires,” said Wilsbach. “Suit planned and launched an MQ-9 combat sortie during an active attack. While missiles hit the airfield, Suit taxied out and got his Reaper airborne. He handed off control to another crew, then switched to the ground control station to recover a different MQ-9. His crew destroyed a priority target and then turned their sensors back toward their own airfield to inspect the runway for damage and determine whether operations could continue.”

“The MQ-9 was a workhorse for combatant commanders during Epic Fury. It provided real-time intelligence, struck 860 targets, and gave our forces the edge while denying the enemy freedom of movement. Airmen-like Suit made sure this asset stayed in the fight and maximized its impact. The MQ-9 success demonstrates the need for a capable follow-on aircraft that achieves the same effects with greater survivability, adaptability, and at a lower cost.”

Rescuing An F-15E Crew Shot Down Over Iran

“Peaches is an air battle manager from Texas,” the chief stated. “During Epic Fury, she found herself in the middle of a story of her own her family will be telling for generations. Peaches led 134 joint and coalition operators responsible for command and control across a complex battle space. Her team supported operations involving more than 1,000 one-way attack drones and 1,200 enemy ballistic missile threats. Those numbers are difficult to comprehend, but for Peaches, command and control was not a collection of symbols moving across the screen.”

“Every symbol represented something real: an aircraft, a threat, a crew, an airman,” he explained. “It was during this time two of those airmen became isolated inside of Iran. What followed became one of the defining moments of the operation. Over 50 hours, Peaches was one of the many who coordinated the combat search and rescue effort, leading her team to integrate 176 aircraft, fighters, bombers, tankers, intelligence platforms, and Air Force Special Operations Command forces that converged on one objective: bringing those Americans home.”

MUST WATCH: The extended @60Minutes interview with DUDE 44 Bravo https://t.co/HZUr7D4Svk pic.twitter.com/OUrlK072XP

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 14, 2026

“Think about the complexity of that problem,” Wilsbach noted. “Aircraft operating at different speeds, altitudes, fuel states, with different sensors, weapons, and responsibilities, while an adversary was actively trying to stop them. Maintenance teams generated additional fighters. Tanker crews extended the range and endurance of the force, intelligence professionals track the threats. AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] airmen brought specialized capabilities need[ed] to reach out to our isolated teammates and get them out. Every one of those airmen was doing something different, yet all were contributing to the same mission.”

“The Dude 44 rescue demonstrates why integration matters,” Wilsbach added. “To someone outside of our profession, committing that much combat power to recover two people might appear extraordinary. To an airman, the reason is simple: we make a promise to one another in our Airman’s Creed. I will never leave an airman behind. If you are isolated, injured, or trapped behind enemy lines, we are coming to get you. The courage and performance displayed during that mission was so impressive that 10 airmen received battlefield promotions. I had the distinct honor of promoting six of those heroes, ranging from staff sergeant to chief master sergeant during a recent trip. Everyone understood that their success depended on someone else doing their job. That is how our air and space forces fight.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com 

The post Airmen Under Fire: Stories From Iranian Barrages On U.S. Bases appeared first on TWZ.

France is accelerating work on the Rafale F5 standard, bringing forward development of a major new configuration of its combat aircraft at a time when the country’s planned next-generation fighter with Germany has effectively collapsed in its original form. The contracts cover the equipment judged to have the highest technical risk, ahead of the overall development contract for the F5 standard, expected for the end of this year.

The French defense procurement agency, the Direction générale de l’armement (DGA), ordered the first upstream development work for F5 from Dassault Aviation, Thales, MBDA, and Safran. The contracts cover key areas including navigation, datalinks, radar, electronic warfare, and propulsion, laying the groundwork for the next configuration of the Rafale, which is planned to enter service with the French Air and Space Force and the French Navy starting around 2033.

#Commande | Rafale F5

La DGA commande les 1ers travaux en amont du prochain lancement en réalisation du standard F5 du Rafale

Ils concernent notamment :
la centrale inertielle
le moteur
le radar
la suite d’autoprotection de l’avion
pic.twitter.com/n3uhBYqIvi

— Direction générale de l'armement (@DGA) September 9, 2026

The most extensive modernization of the Rafale yet, the F5 standard was originally part of a longer transition toward France’s next-generation combat-air capability. But with the Franco-German New Generation Fighter (NGF) effort now effectively dead in its original configuration, the accelerated F5 program is taking on a much larger strategic role.

Rather than simply keeping the Rafale relevant until NGF arrives, France is now developing a version of the aircraft that is set to carry much of the country’s high-end combat-air capability well into the 2030s and potentially beyond.

The increasingly capable F5 could, in turn, reduce the urgency of finding a replacement for the Rafale — while potentially adding to the fighter’s export appeal. After a slow start, Dassault has recorded export sales of 299 new-build Rafales to eight nations.

The DGA’s contracts engage four of France’s principal combat-aircraft industrial players. Dassault Aviation remains responsible for the aircraft and its overall integration; Thales is involved in major sensor, electronic warfare, and communications capabilities; MBDA is responsible for much of the weapons system; and Safran is responsible for propulsion.

Previous Rafale standards have largely consisted of incremental upgrades, focusing on software and other improvements to the existing aircraft configuration. F5 is notably more extensive, addressing many of the critical systems that determine how the aircraft senses the battlespace, communicates with other platforms, conducts electronic warfare, and generates the power needed to operate increasingly demanding equipment.

The DGA has specifically identified the Thales RBE2-XG radar as one of the major technological advances associated with F5.

The RBE2-XG is expected to feature gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors. Compared with previous technology, GaN generates less heat and has the capacity to operate at higher voltages, meaning that output power can be increased, while component size can be reduced. Overall, using GaN should help to get more power out of the radar without increasing its size.

According to the DGA, “This new radar will benefit from a substantial increase in power, and consequently in detection range, as well as improvements in the identification of targets with an extremely low radar cross-section (RCS). Its computing capabilities will also be enhanced to facilitate the integration of artificial intelligence.”

The RBE2-XG will also be “designed with collaborative combat in mind, featuring sensors capable of working together without the need for pilot intervention.” It is also planned to have enhanced resilience, including against cyber threats.

France is already working on the concept of a combat drone to accompany the Rafale, with the future F5 standard providing the crewed aircraft around which those systems can operate.

The new radar will be combined with more capable electronic warfare equipment, improved communications and datalinks, expanded processing capacity, and a more capable propulsion system.

To be developed by MBDA and Thales, the forthcoming F5 version of the SPECTRA self-protection suite is intended to significantly improve detection and jamming capabilities, the DGA says, “through a fully digital approach, enabling a complete overhaul of the core electronic warfare system to counter the increasing density and broadening of the threat spectrum, as well as the growing complexity of threat waveforms, expected by 2035.”

Thales will also be responsible for the new Inter-Vehicle Data Link (IVDL) system, described as a “stealthy and resilient datalink.” The DGA says the new datalink will expand connectivity “thanks to a new high-speed, discreet, and jamming-resistant waveform. IVDL will allow the Rafale to penetrate hostile areas where jammers are widespread, while maintaining optimal quality of communication and dialogue between aircraft.”

Safran will begin preliminary design work on the M88 T-Rex engine, which is planned to increase the turbofan’s thrust from around 16,500 pounds to nearly 19,850 pounds, an increase of roughly 20 percent.

In terms of armament, the contract announcement mentions the ASN4G missile, set to be introduced to service by 2035, which will allow the Rafale F5 to continue to serve as the airborne nuclear component. The munition remains in the early stages of development, but it will be capable of hypersonic speeds — defined as speeds greater than Mach 5 — with a range in excess of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

Other likely new missiles include a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile to succeed the current Meteor. As you can read about here, France’s Comet program, apparently led by the French side of MBDA, is already looking into this requirement, with an apparent plan to introduce the weapon around 2030.

An older video from MBDA showing some of the company’s weapons integrated on earlier versions of the Rafale:

For France, the original logic behind the pan-European FCAS program was that Rafale would eventually give way to the NGF as its principal crewed combat aircraft, operating from land bases and aircraft carriers.

With the collapse of the Franco-German effort, France cannot simply wait for a next-generation fighter program whose industrial and political future is uncertain. Instead, the Rafale has to remain capable against rapidly evolving threats throughout the 2030s and beyond.

With the F5 standard, however, France is looking to incorporate some of the concepts envisaged for NGF. These include distributed architectures in which crewed fighters, uncrewed aircraft, remote carriers, missiles, and offboard sensors cooperate across a battlespace.

A highly upgraded Rafale operating as the crewed controller of uncrewed combat aircraft and remote weapons could perform some of the missions that France originally expected from NGF.

For now, F5 also sidesteps the central problem in the now-defunct Franco-German effort: whether the two countries could agree on the requirements, industrial structure, and workshare behind a new-generation combat aircraft.

Despite its advances, the F5 airframe remains derived from a design dating back to the 1980s, which first entered French service in the early 2000s. In particular, it falls well short of fifth-generation designs — let alone sixth-generation ones — in terms of low observability. This is one area where collaborative drones could potentially help compensate for the Rafale’s inherent limitations.

France has therefore bought itself some time with the F5 program. But it may eventually decide that it needs a future high-end crewed fighter to provide capabilities that an upgraded fourth-generation airframe cannot fully replicate, particularly in terms of survivability against advanced integrated air-defense systems, signature reduction, internal weapons carriage, and operations deep inside heavily contested airspace.

On an industrial level, F5 is also significant because it brings together the same French industrial heavyweights that would have formed the backbone of its FCAS effort. Dassault Aviation, Thales, Safran, and MBDA are now well-positioned to work together on whatever comes after F5, whether that is a crewed combat aircraft, uncrewed CCA-type platforms, or a combination of both. Based on its experience with the nEUROn program, France would be well placed to develop a UCAV that can work cooperatively as well as independently, taking over the deeper-penetrating fighter mission set, and potentially skipping a sixth-generation fighter altogether.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNsu7g7r94

Meanwhile, success with F5 — and, in particular, with the wider combat ecosystem planned around it — could put France in an even stronger position when it comes to any future European fighter project.

For the time being, Britain, Italy, and Japan are pursuing the GCAP/Tempest pathway toward a new combat aircraft. Germany and Spain remain tied to the wider FCAS architecture, even as the original Franco-German NGF arrangement has fractured. Sweden’s position is less clear, with indications that it could collaborate with either France or Germany.

France, for its part, is now investing heavily in an increasingly sophisticated Rafale architecture while maintaining its own sovereign industrial base.

In terms of acqusition, France is expected to pursue a mixed approach, buying new-build Rafales while upgrading suitable aircraft already in service to the F5 standard. The oldest jets are unlikely to receive the full F5 treatment, however.

The irony is that the failure of the NGF effort may ultimately make Rafale F5 more important — and potentially more capable — than it was ever expected to be.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post France Accelerates Rafale F5 Upgrade After Collapse Of FCAS Next-Gen Fighter Project appeared first on TWZ.

The Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing has taken another significant step toward turning the F-15EX Eagle II into a true multirole fighter, conducting the first live-bomb drops from operational F-15EXs during training at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The milestone came during a roughly three-week deployment to Nellis in late August and early September in support of the U.S. Air Force’s Weapons Instructor Course (WIC).

Photographs released by the Air National Guard yesterday show F-15EXs from the 142nd Wing carrying live bombs on the flight line and departing Nellis with the weapons loaded. Official imagery shows the jets armed with a single 500-pound Mk 82 freefall bomb on the fuselage centerline, while spotters also captured F-15EXs carrying a 2,000-pound Mk 84 freefall bomb in the same position.

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The 142nd’s F-15EXs are only now acquiring a capability that was deliberately absent from the wing’s previous F-15C fleet. The Portland, Oregon-based unit was an air-superiority organization when it operated the F-15C, while the F-15EX is ultimately derived from the F-15E Strike Eagle and has considerably more inherent multirole potential.

As we reported in July, the wing had already begun laying the groundwork for this transition. In May, 142nd personnel traveled to Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, where they loaded and dropped inert BDU-50 and BDU-56 training bombs from their F-15EXs. Those weapons replicate the size and weight of 500-pound-class Mk 82-series and 2,000-pound-class Mk 84-series bombs. Over 10 missions, the crews dropped 24 BDU-50s and 12 BDU-56s.

While the F-15EX had already been tested in an air-to-ground role by the Air Force’s test community, the Mountain Home deployment was the first time an operational Eagle II unit had loaded and dropped bombs. The next step, the wing said at the time, would be live weapons employment at Nellis.

The Air Force has emphasized that the F-15EX’s primary mission remains defensive and offensive counter-air, particularly in the homeland-defense role. At the same time, the service’s plans call for the aircraft to provide combatant commanders with strike packages capable of operating in contested environments.

The F-15EX is inherently well suited to such a mission. Derived from the Strike Eagle lineage, it combines that aircraft’s large payload capacity and long range with substantially modernized avionics and electronic warfare systems. The aircraft’s design leaves considerable room for additional weapons and mission equipment, making an expansion into air-to-ground operations relatively straightforward compared with trying to add that capability to the F-15C.

The 142nd has been building the institutional knowledge required to make that transition. Three of its pilots underwent a nine-month course covering the science, tactics, and procedures associated with air-to-ground weapons employment before returning to help establish the wing’s training program. Weapons personnel also traveled to Nellis earlier this year to work with F-15Es assigned to the 59th Test and Evaluation Squadron and become certified in bomb loading procedures.

As well as teaching pilots how to release a weapon, the wing had to develop an entirely new air-to-ground training pipeline for pilots, maintainers, and weapons personnel at a unit that had not previously operated an aircraft with an operational bombing mission.

Nellis is home to the Air Force’s Weapons School and is central to the Weapons Instructor Course, making it one of the most important locations in the service for developing and evaluating advanced tactics. The 142nd’s participation therefore places its emerging F-15EX air-to-ground capability in an environment specifically focused on integrating advanced weapons, tactics, and mission planning.

The wing’s new live bomb-dropping capability also comes as the Air Force continues to explore how broadly the Eagle II can be employed.

Test and evaluation units have already demonstrated that the aircraft can accommodate sophisticated air-to-ground weapons. Earlier this year, an F-15EX from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron participated in a munitions-load training event at Kadena Air Base in Japan, where Air Force personnel practiced loading live GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb IIs onto the aircraft.

The F-15EX is also capable of carrying the conformal fuel tanks used by the F-15E, which can provide additional fuel as well as additional weapons stations. The operational F-15EXs delivered to the 142nd have so far been seen without CFTs, however, and the status of the plan to equip the Oregon aircraft with them remains unclear.

CFTs could become increasingly important if the Air Force moves toward more demanding air-to-ground missions for the Eagle II, particularly those requiring substantial weapons loads and long-range operations.

Another unresolved question is how the Air Force will ultimately crew F-15EXs when they are performing more complex multirole missions.

The Eagle II retains the F-15E family’s two-seat cockpit, although the Air Force’s initial operational concept has generally involved flying the aircraft with a single pilot. That leaves an unused cockpit that could potentially become an important asset as the mission set expands.

Former 142nd Wing commander Col. Michael Kosderka previously told TWZ that the addition of a weapons systems officer or other specialist in the rear cockpit could open the door to more air-to-ground capabilities.

“We can start talking about putting all kinds of air-to-ground capabilities into the airplane, potentially putting WSOs or other experts in the backseat as well to have us do any number of multi-role capabilities that it’s just physically not possible to in the C model,” Kosderka told TWZ in an interview back in 2024. “So the X has tremendous growth capability. It’s really exciting.”

Two crew would be particularly relevant to complex strike missions, where managing sensors, weapons, communications, electronic warfare, and other mission systems can place substantial demands on a single pilot. As we have discussed in the past, a back-seater would also be highly beneficial for the emerging drone controller role.

The Weapons School has also been associated with developing two-seat F-15EX operations, indicating that the second cockpit’s utility is already being considered at the tactical-development level.

For now, it would be premature to characterize the F-15EX as an operational replacement for the F-15E Strike Eagle in the air-to-ground role. The 142nd’s newly demonstrated bombing capability remains part of an ongoing training and development process.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is preparing to field substantially larger numbers of F-15EXs. Beyond the 142nd, additional Guard units are planned to receive the type, in California and Louisiana, as well as Michigan.

The Air Force has announced plans to base F-15EXs at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, where they will eventually replace older F-15Es, which, in turn, are slated to move to Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, as part of a broader realignment of the Eagle fleet.

Another two active-duty F-15EX squadrons are slated to replace the former F-15C force at Kadena. The first F-15EX for permanent assignment at Kadena recently departed Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, facility for the 142nd Wing, where it will undergo final preparations before its eventual deployment to sprawling Okinawa.

The operational implications of the air-to-ground training therefore extend well beyond Portland.

The Eagle II’s generous weapons payload, long range, modern sensors and electronic warfare systems, and ability to carry both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons give the Air Force a platform that can potentially perform several missions without sacrificing the characteristics that make the F-15 attractive for homeland defense and counter-air operations. The same characteristics are also extremely relevant to any export operator, which would expect to operate the Eagle II in a multirole capacity.

As well as a weapons-training milestone, the first live-bomb drops by the 142nd Wing provide more evidence that the F-15EX’s mission is continuing to evolve.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Operational F-15EXs Drop Live Bombs For The First Time appeared first on TWZ.

General Atomics has given us the first look at its new Wildfire drone design. The company is developing this armed medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) uncrewed aircraft in response to new U.S. Air Force requirements for a lower-cost successor to the MQ-9A Reaper.

A rendering of Wildfire was included in a video montage, seen below, which General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI) released earlier today. GA-ASI first announced work on this new drone last month. The Air Force, in partnership with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), formally kicked off its new search for a Reaper successor, currently called the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), in July. GA-ASI also developed the MQ-9A, which is now out of production.

A good idea spreads like Wildfire.#UAS #Airpower pic.twitter.com/eIONVDjZ1n

— General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc (GA-ASI) (@GenAtomics_ASI) September 9, 2026

Wildfire’s pusher-prop design shown is clearly an extension of the existing MQ-9 family, with an overall planform that is extremely similar to that of the Reaper. Like the latest versions of the MQ-9A, the new drone has a sensor turret under the nose and a large blade antenna under the rear fuselage.

Wildfire does notably lack the Reaper’s distinctive hump on top of the forward fuselage. On the MQ-9A, this feature contains the drone’s satellite communications (SATCOM) antenna. What this might mean about how Wildfire is controlled and otherwise communicates is not immediately clear, but it points to the use of a smaller, lower-cost SATCOM terminal. That, in turn, would most likely be tied to a network like Starshield, the government-focused cousin of SpaceX’s Starlink. We could also see greater semi-autonomous control here, or at least a greater reliance on it.

The resulting shape of the forward end of the fuselage is vaguely reminiscent of GA-ASI’s Gnat series of drones from the 1990s, which evolved into the iconic Predator. The MQ-9 family, in turn, is an outgrowth of the Predator.

The rendering of Wildfire also depicts the drone armed with four Joint Strike Missile (JSM) cruise missiles, with two loaded on what appears to be a single pylon under each wing. The stealthy JSM can be employed as an anti-ship or land-attack weapon. GA-ASI has released renderings of MQ-9s in the past with similar loadouts. The Air Force is already acquiring stocks of JSMs, primarily to arm its F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. Stand-off munitions like the JSM have long been seen as an increasingly important, if not critical, addition to the non-stealth Reaper’s arsenal, helping to keep the drones further away from potential threats.

TWZ has reached out to General Atomics for more details.

“General Atomics is looking at it and asking ourselves, ‘What can we really do? No kidding, no BS, actually do,’” GA-ASI spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley did tell us back in August when asked about Wildfire. “Let’s be honest with ourselves first. How do we come out of the box, day one, with a 10,000-nautical-mile ferry range? Can we carry four LRASMs [AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles]? Can we swarm 100 aircraft under semi-autonomous control? Can we fuse all of that data into a highly effective common operating picture? Can we do that at scalable, affordable mass?”

“So that was the assignment, and our engineers sharpened their pencils and got to work,” he added. “What came out the other side was our new Wildfire UAS. That thing is a beast, and no one who actually does this for a living, and is honestly concerned about America’s warfighting edge, can look at it and not want 100 of them as fast as we can make them.”

Wildfire “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank,” Brinkley also told Breaking Defense for a story published last week.

In terms of what the Air Force has said it is looking for with the MMA, as we have previously written:

“[The service] …wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.”

The Air Force also shared last week that it is targeting a roughly $10 million unit cost for the MMA drones, not including sensors and certain other systems. As mentioned, the Reaper is out of production, but the price tag on a fully-equipped Reaper today is widely reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force has itself used the $50 million figure as a reference point in discussing its latest plans for what comes after the MQ-9.

It is unclear how Wildfire might achieve this cost goal while retaining so much obvious Reaper DNA, but even a major 30 to 50 percent reduction in the price tag compared to its predecessor would be a huge deal. In the past, General Atomics’ Brinkley has openly questioned just how cheap an MMA drone could realistically be while still offering comparable capabilities to MQ-9.

The original timeline for the MMA program envisioned the Air Force reaching initial operational capability in 2031 after receiving 20 of the drones. The service is now looking to accelerate that schedule by around two years. The Air Force expects to eventually acquire around 180 MMAs.

The Air Force has tried, without success, to develop a successor to the MQ-9 on several occasions in the past. However, a key driving factor now is huge losses of Reapers in the course of the ongoing conflict against Iran. The service’s MQ-9 fleet has already shrunk dramatically in recent years, in part due to additional losses during operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen last year.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters at a roundtable at the Pentagon last week, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

GA-ASI has long had a monopoly on MALE combat drone sales in the United States, and is clearly looking to extend that now with Wildfire. However, this market space has been expanding, and other companies are already competing for what could be a very lucrative new deal with the Air Force. Winning the MMA contract could open doors to opportunities elsewhere within the U.S. government and with foreign countries. Variants and derivatives of the MQ-9 are also in service today with the U.S. Marine Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and several additional air arms globally.

More information about Wildfire, as well as its competitors, is only likely to continue emerging as the Air Force pushes ahead with new and aggressive plans to finally acquire a follow-on drone to the venerable Reaper.

Update: 2:15 PM ET –

General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley has now shared additional details about Wildfire with TWZ.

“You’re not imagining it. These new Wildfire renders do lack the dorsal hump you see on Reaper, MQ-9B, Gray Eagle, Mojave STOL and many copycat aircraft,” Brinkley explained. “General Atomics has pushed proliferated low-earth orbit controls onto many of our existing aircraft and pioneered that integration across unmanned aerospace. That is a relatively new technology that we already have great experience integrating, and it makes sense to bring that into Wildfire.”

“Proliferated low-earth orbit” (abbreviated variously as pLEO and P-LEO) refers to distributed constellations of hundreds or potentially thousands of satellites in that orbital region. SpaceX’s constellations supporting the aforementioned Starlink/Starshield networks fall into this general category.

“Wildfire is going to leverage ongoing advancements in autonomy on Day One. We envision networking dozens of Wildfires for true combat mass,” according to Brinkley. “Again, not a hypothetical. We’ve been pioneering many advancements in autonomy, AI, and machine learning across the FQ-42A program and using our own MQ-20 Avenger as a CCA [Collaborative Combat Aircraft] surrogate connected to F-22 and F-35. That’s proven, not concept.”

The FQ-42A, also known as the Dark Merlin, is one of two designs now in development under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the Air Force’s CCA program, the other being Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury. The service announced in June that its initial CCA force would be a mixed fleet of FQ-42As and FQ-44As.

“Four JSMs tells you something about Wildfire overall. We can’t just look at overall external weight limits. You have to consider individual hardpoint capacity,” Brinkley continued. “We’ve concepted four JSMs on MQ-9B before, as a concept, but we’ve never done that on Reaper. Wildfire can absolutely do that, from a hardpoint capacity and also an overall MGTOW [maximum gross takeoff weight] perspective.”

“We’re showing two LRASMs on Wildfire, which is twice as much as the DIU solicitation asked for. If you’re going to build a flying weapons truck, give it some teeth,” he added. “These longer-range missiles also give you increased standoff compared to other weapons you associate with the MQ-9, so that also gives you some flexibility. Wildfire can carry two LRASMs for meaningful combat distances.”

The AGM-158C LRASM (Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile) is a derivative of the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family of land-attack cruise missiles, and is also in the Air Force’s inventory today.

Brinkley also said that Wildfire’s ferry range will exceed the MMA’s target of 8,000 nautical miles.

“We can deliver way ahead of the original FY 2031 schedule [for MMA]. We can deliver more than twice as many aircraft as requested in the same amount of time, because our manufacturing is real. Our network of suppliers, subcontractors and partners is real,” he added. “The obvious question is always cost, and I struggle to discuss costs because no one ever wants to compare apples to apples. There are stated price targets out there, and we’ll hit those. We’ll do it with an aircraft you can trust. We have nearly 10 million flight hours and more than 1,600 aircraft delivered. This is what we do.”

Speaking more generally, Brinkley also highlighted General Atomics’ extensive experience in developing and producing armed MALE drones, including the MQ-9.

“It’s important to remember that Reaper made its first flight 25 years ago and was so far ahead of everything else that it still defines the entire category of medium-altitude, long-endurance strike aircraft worldwide. When you build something new to do this kind of work, it rolls out into the Reaper’s shadow,” he said. “I don’t have to defend MQ-9 because the track record speaks for itself. It’s been called the MVP of Epic Fury [the U.S. military’s nickname for the initial phase of operations against Iran this year] for good reason, and I think it has squashed all questions about the relevance of MALE ISR and strike.”

“So that brings us to questions of affordability versus attrition, cost-per-effect, and the true price of combat operations. It also brings up questions of reliability and mission availability, and Reaper excels at both of these, so you can’t replace it with junk and expect to get the same effects,” he continued. “That’s where Wildfire comes in. Our team went to the graph paper and started sketching out what they would do differently and what they would keep the same. Where are the tradeoffs, and what do you change? No one knows this category of aircraft and missions like we do. We’re not guessing and hoping.”

“I can’t get into deep specifics on Wildfire yet, because it’s too early for that and the goalposts seem to move every time I say something publicly. What I can say is that Wildfire takes all of the known quantities of Reaper, blends them with some cutting-edge technologies and manufacturing advancements, and incorporates our more than three decades of lessons learned about large, unmanned combat aircraft to drive cost-per-effect math down.”

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post First Look At General Atomics’ Wildfire, Its Successor To The MQ-9 Reaper (Updated) appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force is targeting an approximately $10 million unit price, excluding sensors and certain other systems, for a drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. The cost of a fully kitted-out Reaper today is generally reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force is also now pushing to accelerate the program to acquire the new drones, dubbed the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), amid what it admits are “concerning” Reaper losses in the course of recent operations against Iran.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters that the goal was for the MMAs to be “closer to half” the cost of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), at a roundtable at the Pentagon yesterday, according to Breaking Defense. He also said the service was hoping to see the price tag on its future CCAs fall to around $20 million after full-rate production of those drones gets underway.

Beyond cost, the Air Force has previously said that it wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.

With all that in mind, Niemi’s MMA cost “estimate includes only the cost of the air vehicle, without being fully missionized,” an Air Force spokesperson clarified after yesterday’s roundtable, per Breaking Defense.

The MQ-9A is out of production, but, as mentioned, the full cost of each one in Air Force service today is generally pegged at between $30 million and $50 million, depending on the sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment they carry. Speaking yesterday, Lt. Gen. Niemi explicitly used the $50 million price point to underscore the MMA program’s unit cost target, as well as explain why the Air Force does not view the newer, in-production MQ-9B as a path to meeting its current needs. General Atomics developed the MQ-9B from the Reaper, but the former is a significantly evolved design with substantial differences from its predecessor.

“If you don’t like losing an MQ-9A that cost on the order of $50 million, with the sensors, you’re probably not going to like losing an MQ-9B at a higher price point,” Niemi said at yesterday’s roundtable, according to a separate report from Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“There’s a, I think, sort of a misconception that because the MQ-9B is in production, we can walk down there with a big fat check and have 100 of them this year,” the general also said, Breaking Defense also reported. “That’s not reality.”

Niemi acknowledged that tradeoffs will have to be made to find an MMA design that is substantially lower cost compared to the MQ-9A.

“You’re going to have to certainly give up something,” he said, per Breaking Defense. “There’s no doubt if we try and pursue the exact same approach that we had with things like the MQ-9, we’re going to get something that costs about the same as an MQ-9.”

However, “what makes the MQ-9 special has nothing to do with the aircraft itself. Like there is no cutting-edge technology for how fast it flies, how high it flies, how far it flies, all that is proven, decades-old technology,” he added, according to that outlet. “So, if you’re focusing on the truck, and you do it in a way where you’re able to make some smart design compromises … we do think you can drive the cost down.”

Niemi said that he expected the MMA, in very general terms, to look much like an MQ-9, including that it would likely also be turboprop powered and have a similarly shaped main wing.

“I think it’s all going to be proven stuff, because that’s how I’m going to drive down the cost so I can get to that goal that I laid out,” Niemi added.

For its part, General Atomics has had choice words in the past regarding discussions about the costs of the MQ-9A and MQ-9B, as well as their capabilities, particularly in light of recent losses. We will come back to the matter of attrition in a moment.

“Some say we need cheaper, disposable aircraft, so that we can use them and throw them away, or lose them and not feel bad about it. No one is talking about actual capability, ready today,” C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for the company, told TWZ back in June after new discussions about a Reaper successor for the Air Force first began to surface. “No one is talking about all of the hard lessons, already learned, about icing and weather and weapons integration. No one is talking about the multiple survivability upgrades available for the existing platforms and the lack of investment in those.”

“These make-believe weapons that don’t exist have the luxury of being anything you imagine them to be,” Brinkley added at that time. “Unscratched lottery tickets, promising all of the win and none of the lose [sic].”

“I think it’s really unfortunate that MMA has been branded as a ‘Reaper replacement’ because it misrepresents what America needs now and what we need later,” he told us last month. “We need an immediate backfill solution to a critical shortage of unmanned MALE [medium altitude, long endurance] ISR/Strike. We need to get going on that now. MMA isn’t a backfill solution, or even a bridge to a backfill solution. This isn’t that.”

Brinkley was speaking here in the context of a discussion about Wildfire, a new drone General Atomics is now developing in response to the MMA requirements.

Wildfire “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank,” Brinkley also told Breaking Defense for its story yesterday.

All of this brings us back around to the matter of MQ-9A losses and the Air Force’s efforts now to accelerate the schedule for the MMA program.

Exactly how many MQ-9As the Air Force has lost due to enemy fire or for any other reason in the course of operations against Iran this year is unknown, but it is reliably reported to be in the dozens. The service is also understood to have lost dozens more Reapers last year during operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. The service is on record saying that its Reaper fleet had shrunk to 135 airframes as of May, down from an official total of 165 as of the start of Fiscal Year 2026. It is also important to note here that these inventory numbers do not include Reapers operated by the Marine Corps or the Central Intelligence Agency.

Air Force officials have offered glowing assessments of the MQ-9A’s performance in operations against Iran, despite these losses, but have also said that the level of attrition is worrisome. That reality, in turn, had major impacts on discussions that led to the current MMA program.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Niemi said yesterday, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

When the MMA program was first announced in July, the stated goal was to have an initial operational fleet of 20 of the drones in service by 2031. The Air Force is now working to push that timeline to the left, but still sees fielding of the new drones as being around three years away, at least. The service eventually hopes to acquire at least 180 MMAs.

“I can’t buy an MMA today. The reality is, based on the budget and other constraints, that I’m not going to buy a whole lot of MQ-9Bs today either,” Niemi conceded, per Breaking Defense.

It is important to remember here that the Air Force has already tried multiple times to develop a replacement for the MQ-9 without success. In that time, the idea of what a successor to the Reaper would look like has changed dramatically. As we’ve written previously:

“The Pentagon has long worked on the basis that a future conflict with a peer rival, and especially with China in the Pacific, would see it facing highly robust anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) scenarios. With that in mind, previous Reaper replacement studies had suggested that low observability would need to be incorporated into the design.”

“The latest thinking seems to reject that, or at least reorient the program toward a lower-cost platform of the kind that the Air Force would be able to field in mass, as well as to absorb the anticipated attrition in a high-end conflict. This does not preclude this airframe from featuring low-observable elements. In fact, it most likely will. But those would be more aggressively balanced against cost.”

MMA is also looking at a wider slate of potential vendors. General Atomics, which has long had a monopoly on the U.S. MALE combat drone market, is not the only one angling now for an MMA contract.

Overall, as we have previously written in the context of the Air Force’s latest effort to move beyond the Reaper:

“…the U.S. drone landscape has changed considerably in terms of manufacturers. A few years ago, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics would have been seen as the front-runners for the MQ-9 replacement. Now, there are more contenders, often with a founding focus on rapidly scaling up production at low cost. Still, these firms have much to prove, especially considering the risk in replacing an aircraft as important as the MQ-9. At the same time, in the more advanced drone space, the legacy defense ‘prime’ contractors are also making major progress in leveraging new technologies to reduce production costs and migrating away from exquisite, very expensive drones as their default offerings.”

The possibility was reportedly raised yesterday that the MMA program could ultimately lead to the fielding of multiple types of drones through successive incremental development cycles. This is exactly how the Air Force is running its CCA program now.

With the Air Force now pushing for a more aggressive schedule for the MMA effort, more details about the designs it is considering may begin to emerge relatively soon. The service certainly has a pressing need already for these drones after so many MQ-9A losses.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF Wants MQ-9 Reaper Successor At A Fraction Of The Cost At $10M Each appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force is seeking an anti-aircraft gun system to help defend its air bases around the world from drones and cruise missiles. The Request for Information (RFI) about these systems, posted on the government’s contracting website on Thursday, is part of a larger Air Force effort to play a greater role in air base defense via ground-based air defenses (GBADs), a capacity traditionally performed by the Army. As a result, the Air Force currently has no such systems. Now it is interested in changing that.

The request comes as the war against Iran exposed gaps in how the U.S. can provide effective, sustained air defenses for its foreign installations and amid concerns about a future fight against a peer competitor like China or Russia.

“The Government is conducting market research to identify potential industry sources capable of providing solutions for a Ground-Based, Medium-Caliber Gun Weapon System that fires affordable munitions, enables defense against air and missile threats with an initial focus on subsonic cruise missiles (CM) and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to provide persistent defense in support of [the] United States Air Force,” the RFI notes.

The RFI doesn’t stipulate what it considers a medium-caliber round; however, according to the Army, the list includes 20mm, 25mm, 30x113mm, 30x173mm and 40mm shells.

“To effectively assess and compare air defense weapon system performance, there are 15 critical baseline operational and technical parameters that must be analyzed in unison,” the RFI explains.

“These key metrics begin with the system’s Salvo Probability of Kill (Pk) evaluated against both Cruise Missiles (CM) and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Groups 1-5 at maximum range and altitude, ensuring robust lethality against diverse modern threats,” the RFI notes.

A salvo probability of kill measures how effectively a salvo, as opposed to a single shot, defeats a target. 

The following chart displays the weight, normal operating altitude and speed of the five drone group classifications.

The Air Force wants this system to be “rapidly deployable, maintaining a lightweight, modular, and transportable footprint that can be swiftly projected into austere theater environments to meet emergent threats.” The RFI does not provide further details of how the Air Force is looking to transport these systems; however, the service relies on its fleets of C-130 Hercules, C-17 Globemaster III and C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft to move equipment. The size and weight of the systems determines which kind of aircraft can transport it.

These systems could also be moved by truck or ship or on their own if self-propelled, but those options also incur a cost in terms of the timeliness of delivery, and can be impossible for rapid global deployments.

A key point of evaluation will be the overall cost of the munitions. The Air Force wants to ensure that the shell’s velocity and terminal effects “are maximized without driving the cost-per-engagement to unsustainable levels or exceeding the physical constraints of the host platform,” the RFI states. We’ll discuss these factors in more detail later in this story.

The service is also looking for the integration of “the right mix of radar, electro-optical, infrared, or radio-frequency sensors—to ensure reliable target acquisition and tracking across varying weather conditions, environments, and countermeasure scenarios.”

As we noted at the top of this story, the Air Force is seeking to improve its organic ability to defend its bases. This has become “an increasingly high priority” for the service, Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink told Congress on May 20.

“The Air Force is developing organic air and missile defense capabilities, including Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-sUAS) to defend our air bases in all theatres [sic],” Meink stated in his written testimony. “The fielding of the Air Base Air Defense Systems (ABADS) missile defense capability, including kinetic defenses, at overseas main operation bases contributes to joint layered defense but does not reduce the need for increased joint investment in air and missile defense. We will continue to work judiciously for the development and procurement of these critical defensive capabilities.”

In its Fiscal Year 2027 budget request, the Air Force is seeking about $1.4 billion for a missile defense variant of the Air Base Air Defense Systems (ABADS), according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. In addition, the Air Force also requested $51.8 million in procurement funds for its Small Unmanned Air Defense Systems (SUADS) in Fiscal Year 2026, according to the Air Force Fiscal Year 2026 budget justification book. 

The war against Iran and the Ukraine war have, in particular, illustrated the challenges of defending against drones and cruise missiles.

Iran launched thousands of these weapons against U.S. air bases and a wide range of critical infrastructure targets in Bahrain, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also launched hundreds of ballistic missiles.

Taken in concert, these attacks have resulted in the deaths of at least nine U.S. troops, more than 760 injuries and the destruction of aircraft, radars and other critical equipment as well as widespread damage to the Middle Eastern nations Iran has targeted.

Concerns about the tremendous expenditure of U.S. interceptors exacerbating the stress on America’s magazine depth of these high-end defensive weapons are an issue that TWZ has raised frequently for years.

There are two facets to potential use of gun systems for base defense. The first is that in complex air defense environments, it provides an inner, last line of defense against incoming threats. If the outer layers fail to take down the target or that target is not considered a priority over others, a hard-kill gun system offers a predictable and relatively reliable fallback. The gun system would become even more important if interceptor stocks run low, even temporarily, and those weapons need to be rationed for higher-end threats. With the outer defensive rings collapsing, the inner becomes far more important.

For small drones, that interceptors would not be effective with anyway, the gun system can take them down in localized air defense scenarios. Then there is also defending bases in lower threat areas where there are not additional layers of SAM systems. A gun system can provide a core aerial defense against lower-end, lower-density drone and cruise missile threats without costing huge sums of money or requiring a huge logistical footprint.

Beyond that, there is a direct cost comparison argument, but again, that is in a vacuum and a gun system cannot take the place of a multi-layered air defense system without inviting huge risk. Still, the engagement cost comparison is worth mentioning.

High-end, expensive, difficult-to-manufacture air defense weapons, like Patriot PAC-3 MSE, are clearly inefficient against drones. For instance, a mass-produced Iranian Shahed-136 can cost about $35,000 to $50,000, while a Patriot PAC-3 can run about $5 million and takes years to procure. By comparison, the cost-per-engagement efficiency of gun-based air defense systems, designed to defend against drones and subsonic cruise missiles, is far greater. One example of how this plays out is the cost of firing the Army’s Centurion Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar (C-RAM) system. It is a ground-based version of the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) used on various U.S. and foreign warships, and is armed with a six-barrel 20mm Vulcan Gatling-type cannon firing M940 rounds. Those self-destructing rounds currently have a price tag of $80.70, according to the Army’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request. This means a two-second burst from a Centurion, at a rate of fire of 4,500 rounds per minute, would cost just over $12,100.

Again, this is not a strict apples-to-apples comparison, but it can become a bigger factor during prolonged conflicts when high-end weapons stocks begin to run short. It’s also worth noting that drone interceptors are a rapidly growing capability set that are a lower-cost option for swatting down one-way attack drones and even some cruise missiles. Systems like Coyote have been in service for years with the Pentagon and have been protecting bases overseas with strong results. Even cheaper systems are emerging out of lessons learned in Ukraine. All of these systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, but pairing them with a new gun system would likely have synergistic effects. Overall, deploying densely layered short-range air defenses is becoming increasingly important in its own right, at least in high-threat areas.

Ukraine has a great deal of experience with the costs and prioritization of air defense capabilities. The country faces daily attacks by Russian missiles and drones, which is causing mounting casualties and destruction. This ceaseless bombardment has almost completely depleted Ukraine’s supply of Patriot interceptors, leaving it largely defenseless against ballistic missiles. As we noted yesterday, Ukraine is also running short of air-to-air missiles its Air Force F-16s use to swat down drones.

However, Ukraine has also relied heavily on a wide array of gun-based air defense systems, including the German-made Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (SPAAG). Based on the chassis of the Leopard 1 main battle tank, Gepards feature twin radar-aimed 35mm automatic cannons, mounted on a single turret. The German variant sports an S-band search radar and a Ku-band tracking radar. These radars are critical to the Gepard’s ability to locate, track, and engage targets at night and amid poor weather conditions.

The success of the Gepards in Ukraine have helped spur new global interest in SPAAGs.

The following video shows a Gepard blasting an Iranian-made Shahed-136 out of the sky.

A video reportedly showing two Russian Shahed-136 (Geran-2) loitering munitions being shot down by the Ukrainians with a German-delivered Flakpanzer Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) during last night's attack in Odesa Oblast, southern Ukraine.… pic.twitter.com/OhH7vTultm

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) September 7, 2023

The Air Force force is also looking at directed energy weapons like lasers for force protection and especially for defending bases overseas. While gaining traction across the services due in large measure to the much lower cost of delivering effects, these systems are still works in progress. Gun-based air defenses, on the other hand, are mature and proven, and modern precision-guided, programmable ammunition makes them even more efficient and effective.

Beyond the cost, high-end air defense systems — including their component sensors — though portable, are generally fixed to a specific location. That makes them vulnerable to attack. This has been the case in both the war against Iran and Ukraine. The same concerns hold true of aircraft. Both conflicts have shown aircraft vulnerability to drones when parked out in the open. Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web attack on Russian strategic bombers last year in particular shed light on this issue, which we have been sounding the alarm on for a long time.

For years now, U.S. military officials have often pushed back on the utility and cost-effectiveness of investing more in the physical hardening of bases and other critical facilities, especially shelters to shield aircraft from drones and other threats. However, that is beginning to change. In February, the Pentagon released new guidance about hardening, which “does not mean enclosing an entire facility, but selectively introducing obstacles that disrupt predictable aerial access,” the document explains. “Even modest obstacles can deter low-cost, consumer-grade drones and force higher-risk flight profiles.”

In addition to these challenges, the Air Force is also facing the headwinds of an overall lack of U.S. short-range air defense capabilities, a concern we have been highlighting for years. Currently, there are three gun-based SHORAD systems being fielded by the U.S. military. These include the aforementioned Centurion C-RAM systems.

The Army also uses the Sgt. Stout, an air defense system based on the 8×8 Stryker light armored vehicle. The Sgt. Stout has a turret that can be fitted with up to two four-round launchers for Stingers. Those launchers can also be swapped out for ones that can be loaded with a pair of millimeter-wave radar-guided AGM-114L Hellfire missiles. The turret also has a 30mm XM914 automatic cannon, which can fire proximity-fuzed airbursting rounds against drones and other aerial threats, and a 7.62x51mm M240B machine gun.

The Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) is armed with 30mm cannons and M240C coaxial machine guns in remote weapon stations (RWS). The RWS on one of the two vehicles is also configured to fire Stinger missiles for a spectrum of ground-based air defense scenarios.

The Army may have additional gun-based systems on the way. In July, the service put out a request for information to companies that can provide a new gun-based air defense option, using a 50mm cannon system to track and defeat Group 1, 2 and 3 drones.

A few weeks later, Northrop Grumman introduced its Raid Hunter 50mm GBAD system, which it said “combines proven Chain Gun® technology, precision‑guided 50mm ammunition and a networked, interoperable system controller to deliver powerful protection against high-volume, mixed-threat aerial raids. It is designed to defeat a range of aerial threats including high‑priority cruise missile threats, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), and other advanced threats.”

We’re introducing Raid Hunter, our newly named 50mm gun-based air defense system designed to defeat mass, mixed aerial raids with cost-effective interceptors and deep magazine effectors which can be delivered to the warfighter at scale. Learn more: https://t.co/gnOzpo0RA3 pic.twitter.com/oTqORTG9Q4

— Northrop Grumman (@NGCNews) August 11, 2026

There are foreign options should the Air Force want to go that route. For instance, German arms maker Rheinmetall makes the popular Skyranger 35 gun system, which is a turret that can fit on a wide array of armor hulls.

The Skyranger 35 “is equipped with a KDG 35/1000 revolver cannon in 35 mm x 228 caliber with a firing rate of 1,000 rounds per minute,” according to Rheinmetall, which began delivering these to Ukraine in January. “It has an effective range of up to 4,000 meters and a high degree of commonality with the Oerlikon Revolver Gun Mk 3. Thanks to AHEAD technology, the Skyranger 35 is airburst-capable. In the future, it will also be possible to equip it with modern guided missiles.”

Skyranger 35s mounted on Cold War-era Leopard 1 tanks have just emerged on the battlefield for Ukraine.

You can see a video of that system below.

It seems that Ukraine's 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment which belongs to the Ground Forces has taken delivery of the first Skyranger 35 SPAAGs mounted on a Leopard 1 chassis made by @RheinmetallAG.

A contract for the delivery of the Skyranger 35 SPAAGs was signed in H2 of… pic.twitter.com/VRWhGx1LCa

— GAU (@deaidua) September 3, 2026

Skyshield is the fixed placement cousin of this system and has been bought by a number of nations.

This is just one example of a large number of potential offerings that could fit the USAF’s interests, from both domestic and foreign origins.

As we discussed earlier in this story, the U.S. is already facing a challenge defending against Iranian threats. A war with China would be more devastating and, when it comes to the Air Force protecting its bases, require far more robust defenses. At the same time, the Air Force is still very early in the process of taking on more responsibility for protecting its assets.

Parties have until 5 p.m. Oct. 9 to submit their proposals to the Air Force for a gun-based air defense system. With limited options and the service pushing to address its growing desire for organic air defenses, it will be interesting to see who comes forward and what systems they offer. We will provide more details about this effort when they become available.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

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