A new independent report argues that increased access to better-protected airfields is as important, if not more so, than buying advanced tanker aircraft when it comes to meeting future U.S. aerial refueling demands. The authors, in part, call for the U.S. military to invest in new hardened shelters that are large enough for tankers to fit inside. Top U.S. Air Force officials have continued to downplay any need for more physical hardening of bases, even now with the experiences from the war with Iran, which have only underscored the already glaring dangers posed to planes sitting out in the open on flightlines.

Hardened shelters and other efforts to “boost surface infrastructure resilience” form one of three main themes in a report the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., published yesterday. It also says that the Air Force should work to “incorporate adaptive mission systems” into existing tanker fleets, including new communications and self-protection capabilities, as well as pursue acquisition of a next-generation tanker with a blended wing body (BWB) design. Hudson’s latest analysis, which is titled Resilient Reach: Redesigning Aerial Refueling for Contested Global Operations, builds on a previous report it published in 2021. Last year, the Institute published an additional report warning more generally about the vulnerabilities created by a lack of hardened infrastructure at U.S. bases worldwide.

“Aerial refueling is an unmatched United States military advantage, but it currently depends on vulnerable forward bases and medium-range tankers that could be neutralized,” Hudson’s report states as its number one finding. “Suppression of this critical capability could collapse US air operations and heavily contribute to US defeat in a war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC).”

Though not necessarily to the degree that the Hudson Institute is arguing for, the Air Force has been working in recent years to increase the networking architecture available on the KC-135 and KC-46 tankers it has now, as well as field new defensive systems. The service is also still exploring a wide range of next-generation aerial refueling concepts, including new stealthy and/or uncrewed tankers, under what is now called the Advanced Tanker Systems (ATS) program.

Base resiliency and aerial refueling capacity

The base resiliency aspects of Hudson’s new aerial refueling report are a particular standout, especially as this is an area where the Air Force has been dragging its feet, if not actively pushing back.

“Aerial refueling surface infrastructure is the ‘network of airfields, maintenance facilities, and bulk fuel storage and distribution facilities and systems necessary to enable tanker operations,'” Hudson’s new report states, citing the Institute’s past work from 2021. “‘Enhancing the capacity and resilience of its surface architecture should be a top priority for the US Air Force – even if it comes at the cost of tanker procurement – because it will yield a greater increase in the number of employable tankers’ and receiver aircraft supported.”

With this in mind, “the department [of the Air Force] should first pursue access to more airfields, including large commercial ones, and nurture its invaluable relationships with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other allies that provide access to tanker airfields,” per the report. “Second, it should improve bulk fuel storage and distribution by constructing lower-capacity hardened fuel stores rather than higher-capacity but vulnerable aboveground storage tanks, fielding airfield and over-the-shore fuel distribution systems, and securing access to more maritime tankers, including by levying higher working capital fund rates to fund bulk fuel resilience initiatives.”

On top of all this, “the Air Force will need to fund passive defenses (such as personnel and equipment bunkers, reconstitution equipment and units, redundant capabilities, the aforementioned fuel infrastructure hardening, more hardened large aircraft shelters, and tanker decoys) and active counter-command, control, communications, computing, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C5ISRT) and air and missile defenses to defeat threats,” the report adds. “As witnessed at Prince Sultan Air Base, dispersion alone is insufficient to avoid attack in an era of persistent surveillance and precision targeting.”

Five Air Force KC-135 aerial refueling tankers were damaged on the ground in an Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in March, just weeks after the start of hostilities with Iran. That same attack destroyed one of the service’s prized E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar planes. Lt. Gen. Linda Hurry, head of Air Force Materiel Command, confirmed just last week that repairs are still ongoing on some of the KC-135s that were damaged, reinforcing that attacks that do not outright destroy friendly aircraft on the ground can still have significant impacts.

Iran was also reportedly able to damage F-15E Strike Eagles and A-10 Warthog ground attack jets on the ground at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan during another more recent attack on the night of September 9-10.

“Historically, aerial refueling aircraft operated from sanctuary on the ground and in the air. However, as Iran’s attacks on Prince Sultan Air Base demonstrated, adversaries can target tankers on the ramp,” Hudson’s report notes. “The [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) ability to attack airfields and aircraft at them dramatically exceeds the range, quality, and quantity of Iranian systems.”

By Hudson’s assessment, “in 2025 the PLA could already deliver thousands of PLA Air Force and PLA Rocket Force munitions per day against targets near its territory and around 400 munitions per day against targets in the Second Island Chain, the Middle East, and Central Asia. It could even strike Alaska and Western Europe with small numbers of weapons,” the report explains. “By 2035, the threat will be far more severe; the PLA may be capable of delivering even more munitions and striking targets throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas. This assessment does not account for additional attacks by the PLA Navy, PLA special forces in Operation Spiderweb–style attacks, or other threats.”

Ukraine’s unprecedented Operation Spiderweb involved near-simultaneous near-field drone attacks on air bases across Russia, which resulted in the destruction of at least 10 Russian bombers, as well as a variety of other aircraft. All of those planes were notably parked on open flightlines.

This particular threat vector, among others, was further highlighted by the Air Force’s sudden and unexpected decision to withdraw B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford, an airbase in the United Kingdom, earlier this month. As TWZ noted at the time, it also put a spotlight on the U.S. military’s continued lack of investment in hardened aircraft shelters and other fortified air base infrastructure.

To go back to the Pacific scenario, “given the PLA’s focus on systems destruction warfare and nodal analysis, tanker airfields would likely be prime targets. Tankers require bulk fuel stores, long runways, and ample ramp space,” Hudson assesses in its new report. “All of these resources would be easier to suppress and more difficult to reconstitute than operations for other assets, such as fighter aircraft or runway-independent Edge Force units. There are also currently few hardened large aircraft shelters suitable for tankers, which makes them vulnerable to observation and attack on the ramp.”

“Although large hardened aircraft shelters suitable for tankers can be expensive (ranging from $30–$150 million depending on scope and location), they can shield aircraft from observation and inclement weather, force adversaries to employ more numerous unitary weapons (rather than a small number of submunition-armed weapons) and protect tankers that cannot get airborne upon warning of an incoming attack,” Hudson’s report adds.

Hudson’s report recommends the construction of at least 60 large hardened aircraft shelters spread between an array of bases globally, at a total cost of $3.06 billion.

“The costing for this estimate assumes a conservative average Area Cost Factor of 1.87, a 10-year construction program, and 10 percent portfolio efficiencies from replicating similar projects at multiple sites, potentially using the same prime contractor or a set of contractors under a consortium,” per a footnote. “Large aircraft hardened aircraft shelters are assumed to be similar to the Andersen Air Force Base Air Expeditionary Force Forward Operating Location Aircraft Maintenance Hangar.”

With this in mind, the report also notes that these same shelters could be used for other larger aircraft beyond tankers, like bombers. It’s also important to note that shelters with a lower, but still useful degree of hardening, or ones that are just meant to conceal what is inside, would be cheaper to construct. We will come back to this in a moment.

The base hardening debate

TWZ has highlighted all of these points and more in our prior reporting on the ongoing debate within the U.S. military about the value of constructing new hardened (and unhardened) aircraft shelters and other passive defenses. As we wrote after the withdrawal of the B-1s from Fairford:

“It is fair to point out that typical above-ground hardened aircraft shelters are not invulnerable, especially to attacks involving ballistic, cruise, and certain air-launched threats. There are also substantial cost and other factors to consider when it comes to any major military construction effort.”

“That being said, having more hardened infrastructure also imposes costs and complexities on opponents, who have to dedicate more advanced and costly munitions and other resources to ensure targets are neutralized. Shelters have the knock-on benefit of complicating the targeting process for an enemy by obscuring where aircraft are or are not positioned, to begin with. An opponent has to treat shelters like they are full even if they are empty.”

“When thinking about hardened aircraft shelters, stereotypical Cold War-era reinforced concrete structures typically come to mind. However, they do not all have to be built to a one-size-fits-all standard with the same degree of hardening across the board to be useful. Shorter-range drone attacks are typically carried out by platforms carrying small explosive charges or that are designed to drop small bomblets. Even longer-range one-way-attack drones generally have smaller warheads than traditional missiles, they also hit with less kinetic energy.”

“A structure that shields against smaller blasts and shrapnel, also including from cluster munitions that can be readily scattered across wide areas, is one that then has to be addressed by more capable weapons. This could even include mobile or otherwise temporary shelters that offer sufficient concealment and protection.”

“Eliminating, or at least substantially mitigating, the lowest rung of threats creates a dilemma for opponents, who then have to decide whether it is even worthwhile to attempt certain types of attacks. There is clear value in narrowing the available options for the enemy and pushing them toward having to expend higher-end, more expensive munitions, that are available in smaller quantities, and that traditional active defenses may be better optimized to handle. As an example, it may be more viable to shoot down a small barrage of incoming cruise missiles than a swarm of dozens of drones.”

This is a diverse threat ecosystem that extends globally, too. This was highlighted in August by an attempted drone attack on a Ukrainian An-124 at an airport in Germany, which authorities in that country subsequently blamed on Russia.  This has been a growing point of concern in Europe more broadly in recent years, as well.

Drones, in particular, present increasing dangers to key U.S. military bases and critical infrastructure within the U.S. homeland, as well as in waters just off America’s coastlines. Serious incidents at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in 2023 and Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana just earlier this year have reinforced that these threats are no longer limited to facilities and assets overseas.

No ‘silver bullets’ for safeguarding tankers

To be clear, hardening U.S. bases cannot address current or future threat ecosystems by itself, and needs to be part of a larger defensive architecture that incorporates a range of capabilities including surface-to-air missiles, electronic warfare systems, and directed energy weapons, as well as tactical jets in the air. Furthermore, to reiterate, the view of “surface infrastructure resilience” outlined in Hudson’s report extends beyond defensive measures entirely, and does not discount the value of distributed and dispersed operations within the larger context. When it comes to aerial refueling, more broadly, the authors do also still argue for the continued upgrading of the Air Force’s existing tankers, as well as the acquisition of next-generation aircraft.

At the same time, as mentioned, physical hardening is the area where the Air Force continues to push back.

“I think that I don’t want to spend a lot of money on hardening shelters. Unless you’re going to send something 100 feet or more underground, we can blow it up, and so can they,” Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said in an interview with Breaking Defense in July. “So, the economics of building a shelter that is impervious to a strike doesn’t work.”

“I think the economics favor defending your airspace, defending your ground space with systems that can defeat the incoming rounds, versus building a shelter,” he added. “Some people would argue, well, you should do both. Well, that’s even more expensive. And the other thing is, the shelter doesn’t go anywhere.”

Wilsbach was responding here to a direct question about whether his position on this topic had changed since 2023.

“I’m not a big fan of hardening infrastructure,” Wilsbach, then commander of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), had said at a roundtable at the Air and Space Forces Association’s main annual symposium that year. “The reason is because of the advent of precision-guided weapons … you saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters. They’re not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.”

As pointed out earlier, there are different degrees of hardening, not all of which have to rely on permanent infrastructure, and that can add defensive value balanced against cost. Shelters for concealment and to protect against attacks involving drones or submunitions, as well as nearby detonations for strikes by weapons with larger unitary warheads, can be built for far lower cost while still complicating the enemy’s ability to neuter airpower on the ground.

Gen. Wilsbach’s comments, and similar remarks from other U.S. officials, also stand in stark contrast to a very visible global trend when it comes to the construction of new aircraft shelters, hardened and not, including in China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Even before Operation Spiderweb, expanding Ukrainian drone and missile attacks had notably prompted Russia to kick off a large-scale push to build new hardened shelters at various bases, especially on the occupied Crimean Peninsula. These efforts now include the construction of huge shelters big enough for bombers, something the country has never done before

“It’s probably most contentious to assert that tanker aircraft should also be under consideration for hardened aircraft shelters, or at least hangars that can cover them from observation,” Timothy Walton, a Senior Fellow at Hudson’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology and one of the report’s authors, told Breaking Defense for a piece that outlet published yesterday. “But I think in light of what we’ve seen from Operation Epic Fury, it’s necessary.”

Hudson’s latest report certainly underscores how the Air Force’s ability to provide adequate aerial refueling capability in the future requires ensuring the enemy cannot neutralize those critical assets before they can even get off the ground.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Hardened Shelters Critical To Survival Of USAF’s Tanker Fleet: Study appeared first on TWZ.

Few humans have flown a jet as high or as fast as Adelbert “Buz” Carpenter. During his six years as an SR-71 Blackbird pilot, the now-retired Air Force colonel flew 230 missions, frequently exceeding three times the speed of sound. Over the course of nearly 800 hours flying one of the world’s most iconic aircraft, Carpenter soared over Cuba, skirted North Korea and tracked Russian nuclear submarines in the Arctic. He also had a few close calls, in one case narrowly avoiding disaster.

With the possibility that NASA could be returning the SR-71 to its test fleet, the Blackbird is back in the news and we wanted to dive deep into what it was like to fly the jet and get some thoughts on the latest SR-71 rumors from someone who piloted it. We couldn’t think of anyone better than “Buz” Carpenter.

Before joining the Blackbird program, Carpenter flew recon missions during the Vietnam War as an RF-4C pilot among other assignments. He now serves as a docent at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Udvar Hazy Center.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: How did you become an SR-71 pilot? Walk me through your decision to join the program. What made you want to fly it? What was the qualification process like?

A: Well, it was a multi-step process… You had to fill out all this paperwork. You had to send them your flight records, all your flight checks, your physical records. What are your professional ratings in the Air Force? Do they rate you as superior? 

The home base was Beale Air Force Base in California. If they liked you, you got called back for about a week. The first two days were a modified astronaut’s physical. I mean, they checked everything. You had a series of interviews. As a pilot, I had to fly with two current SR-71 pilots, not in the SR, but in the companion trainer, the T-38. 

At any time, there were only 11 of us qualified to fly the SR-71. That’s how small a group it was for the whole program. Only 85 of us ever flew operational missions… So you can see it’s a pretty small group.

Q: Did pilots have to be invited to apply for the SR-71 program?

A: Oh, you had to apply for it. When there was a pilot in the program and he knew somebody he used to fly with that was really super, the invitation would be: ‘fill out the paperwork, and once we get the paperwork and look you over, we’ll call you back’ and go through the same routine that I went through. 

You’ve got to go through the physical. Sometimes it was shortened because they knew the person. A couple of them were actually T-38 instructors at Beale Air Force Base, and their invitation was a lot shorter because they had all the records there. They knew who you were, and they knew how you could fly.

About a week before Christmas, 1974, I got a telegram that says ‘you’ve been selected. You will report to Beale Air Force Base July 1975 and commence training in the SR-71.’ I couldn’t have been happier.

Q: What was the training like?

A: The first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to get checked out in the T-38, even though we had all flown it earlier. You had to become [requalified] in it, because as long as you’re in a program, you’re going to continue to fly the T-38. 

Once you actually started the program, you’d be paired with your navigator, who then assumed the title Reconnaissance Systems Officer [RSO]. And in my case, it was the wonderful Capt. John Murphy. We trained and flew together for four years. 

Your first month or so was mostly academics, because the airplane was so different. You had to learn the systems because the airplane operates in a very hot environment — an average temperature of almost 600 degrees [Fahrenheit]. The airplane grows three to four inches in length, an inch or two in width — it’s 93% titanium to deal with the high temperatures [associated with supersonic flight]. So during flights, you are going to have to deal with systems that are now straining or starting to fail because of the heat environment they’re operating in. So it is imperative that you understand exactly how this airplane is engineered, and what kind of options you might have if you start getting failures.

Then you start getting into the simulator, and obviously it’s a kind of crawl-walk-run type of a deal. This was the first simulator I’d ever seen that was a computer simulator. Up until that point, they called them part-task trainers. It had all the switches and everything, but it didn’t fly like the airplane. Like you’d be in the trainer and they want to simulate a fire. Somebody would bang against the side of this thing, and yell ‘fire’ and turn on the fire light, but they were just watching what you were doing. The SR simulator flew exactly like you [would fly the plane]. 

So even before John and I started training, we would find times when the simulator wasn’t being used at night, and we would go down there, and fly this simulator. And if you did something wrong, it reacted exactly how the airplane would react. I mean, it could crash if you did something bad enough.

There’s no visual. The simulator could move a little bit motion-wise, not severely. It would react exactly how the airplane was going to react, but you couldn’t see anything. Your first visual of what the airplane was like was going to be on your first flight in the airplane. 

That’s when you’re going to see what does a takeoff look like in 20 seconds? What does it look like to get behind a tanker and refuel? And as importantly, what does it look like to come back in at 175 indicated [airspeed] and land this airplane on a runway? It was a tremendous training aid because when you came back later on when you were doing your six weeks in Japan, maybe you took some vacation, but the first thing after that they’re going to put you in the simulator for four hours and see how you react to emergencies. It was very complex and defining. We washed people out who could not maintain the level of proficiency that we expected if you were going to fly this airplane.

Q: Could you practice refueling as well?

A: You could do takeoffs, because it was like an instrument takeoff, and you could do ‘quote’ instrument landings, but you had no visual to see how this whole thing would come together. Air refueling we didn’t mess with it because there wasn’t enough you could see. When you came to an air refueling in the simulator, they would just fill you up and say, ‘okay, you’ve been refueled.’ Because you needed the visual picture to understand what you’d be doing behind the tanker.

Q: Tell me about the first time you donned the pressure suit, which you had to wear to withstand the pressures of flying at altitudes of up to 80,000 feet or more.

A: If you were going to fly, you came in two and a half hours early. You had to pass a physical before every flight to make sure your sinuses and blood pressure and a number of other things were okay. You would then have a meal of steak and eggs, just like the astronauts, high protein, low bulk. They would brief you on the status of your airplane, and then about an hour and 15 minutes prior, you would go down where your suits were being maintained, and you’d put on cotton long johns because you’re going to perspire a little bit. Not profusely, but occasionally, if you were low on fuel. The fuel was the cooling system for the airplane, and if you’d been flying at the higher speeds, and you were low on fuel, the suit would heat up a little bit. 

They’d suit you up. I’m going to stop there. The first time you ever suited up, you’re not going to the airplane. They’re just exposing you. It was a [NASA] Gemini suit that had been modified, and you put on the cotton long johns. You had two people that helped you into the suit. The suit is lying on the floor like a coverall. So you’re going to come through the back of the suit. You put your legs on like you would a coverall you’d have at home. You then put your arms through the sleeves, and at that point, the two technicians would grab that helmet ring, and they would lift it up, and then you would duck underneath and come up and stand.

So now the suit is fully on you, and the helmet ring is sitting on your shoulder. The first time you do that, it probably takes 25 minutes, because they’re explaining to you, this is the easiest way to do it. This is where you should step. This is how you get your legs in. This is how you get your arms in. And then the next thing they’re going to do, they’re going to hand you your helmet. 

The suit weighs about 40 pounds. If you’re claustrophobic, this is not a program to be in. It’s not overpowering, but it’s your work suit and something to get used to. It’s not that uncomfortable in a sitting position because that’s where you’re going to use it most of the time, sitting in the cockpit. 

They’re going to hand you your helmet, and in the helmet — which most people can’t see — there’s a seal that comes around your face. So once you get the helmet on, you’re going to crank down the seal so it seals tightly, because you are going to be breathing — once the visor comes down in the aircraft — you’re going to be breathing 100% oxygen until you land. The reason for that is that the cabin is pressurized to 26,000 feet to reduce the pressure on the airplane. So they want to reduce the nitrogen in your blood. You’re just like a diver when you go from sea level to 26,000 feet. It’s like a diver who’s been diving coming back up to sea level. So by breathing 100% oxygen, you get the nitrogen out of your system, and you avoid the bends.

There were very few, and possibly no episodes like that in the SR program, but in the U-2 sister program, they maintained an altitude of 28,000 feet, and they had to pre-breathe oxygen before they ever went out to the airplane. Because once they got to the airplane, start up, they go straight to altitude. When we take off, it takes us a half hour from the time our visor comes down, breathing 100% oxygen, before you can take off, and then you’re going to go to a tanker to refuel. So by time you were through at the tanker, you’ve been breathing oxygen, pure oxygen, for over an hour. And the reason for taking off light and going to a tanker: Early in the program, the test program, I think we lost two airplanes doing tests due do heavyweight takeoffs and aborts.

So to preclude that, instead of taking off with 80,000 pounds of fuel, we would take off with 40,000 pounds of fuel. It reduced the wear and tear on the tires, so we could accelerate quicker, less stress.

But there was a second piece. When the Concorde crashed in Paris in 2000, it lost two engines on one side. They could never get the airplane going fast enough. The airplane stalled. The powerful engines caused the airplane to roll over.

On the SR, it had been forecast through the simulations that if you lost one of your afterburners, lost an engine right after takeoff, there wasn’t enough airflow over your flight controls because you have to keep the other afterburner going. You were going to do the same thing. You were going to roll over and crash. So if you had a full load of fuel, it would take you about maybe 20 seconds, 30 seconds to get above 350 [knots] because at 350, you had more than enough air going across the flight controls to control an engine-out condition. By reducing the takeoff weight down to 40,000 pounds, that dead zone where you didn’t have control was probably 15 seconds. Never happened, but that was part of the theory behind why we took off with half a fuel load. 

We took off with heavier fuel loads, occasionally. I think I may have taken off once or twice with a full load. It was a fairly rare exception, but we would take off with 50,000 pounds. I’ve taken off with 60,000 pounds a couple times.

Q: How was your first flight? When was it?

A: You’re not going to be impressed. My first flight, I think, was the 16th of July, 1976, and your first flight in the airplane is subsonic. You’re going to be fully suited up. You’re going to take off. It’s going to be the first time you ever see a takeoff. The takeoff is 20 seconds, and in 20 seconds, you’re going to go 4,500 feet from a dead stop. You’re going to lift off doing 230 miles an hour as you bring the nose up and accelerate to 400 knots. You’re going to pass through 20,000 feet less than two minutes from the time you start your takeoff roll, and then you’ll level off at 25,000 feet and head out to the tanker.

On your first flight, you’re going to spend almost an hour and a half on the tanker, and that’s to teach you how you refuel this airplane behind our special tankers. Almost all the guys had prior refueling experience, so you’re helping them adjust to a new type of refueling regimen per se. 

Occasionally, you’d get a guy who had no refueling experience, and that was more difficult to try to teach somebody for the first time how you do refuelings. And one of the trickier things with the tankers, you’d hook up with a tanker, and they’re doing 315 [mph] to 325 [mph] at 25,000 feet. That was where we liked to refuel. So, not every time, but it was not uncommon that by the time you were passing through, having accepted 70,000 pounds of fuel, you’re starting to get power limited, and there were two things you can do. 

The preferred thing was you would light the left afterburner to the min-burner [minimum afterburner], and bring the right engine back to a point it would be your modulator. But now you’re going to put the rudder in, because you’re going to be slightly cocked, because your left engine is in min-burner, and what we want you to do is not drop off the boom. 

Strategic Air Command, our parent command in the Air Force, wanted you to drop off the tanker, stabilize, light the left burner, adjust the airplane speed, pull in and refuel. The critical thing for us in refuelings is that we wanted to have full tanks at the end of the air refueling point, and if it’s a timed mission, we would need to have that all done at a certain time because maybe there are other airplanes or satellites or that they’re going to use us as a cue. 

So basically, I never dropped off, and as an instructor pilot, I taught my students to be able to light the afterburner, put the rudder in, use the right throttle as a modulation, and stay there. One of the good things in our tankers that others didn’t have, we could talk to the tanker crew through the boom, and the outside world couldn’t hear us. So, particularly on operational missions, when we’re running radio silent, we could give the tanker instructions that we wanted passed on without having to break radio silence. 

Q: How did you prepare for your first flight?

I probably had a 150 hours in the simulator. I felt very comfortable. Came in like I told you for the physical, and we talked with my instructor about what we were going to do that day, and got suited up. I wouldn’t say so much nervousness, but anticipation. 

You’re going to have your first flight. You go up, and when you get up in the cockpit, you sit down. You put your arms on the side rails, and those same two people, men or women, that suited you up are now going to reach in and make all the critical connections. This is the first time you’re really going to see the whole process with the dual oxygen system, your comm system, hooking up your survival pack, your parachute, everything.

You go through the same thing you’ve done in a simulator, but now you’re in the aircraft. You’re gonna, for the first time, be able to taxi it and get a feel for how sensitive are the brakes and find out what your turning radius is. Every airplane has a different radius, and how much do you anticipate when you start to make a turn as you’re heading out? You taxi on out when it’s that time. Go to the end of the runway, and they’ll do one more inspection to make sure everything looks good on the airplane, and you’ll just kind of go through, and then you’ll call the tower, and you’re cleared on the runway.

And once you’re cleared for takeoff, what you’ll do is you’ll release the brakes as you bring the power to mil [military power—full power without afterburner]. You’ll quickly check your engines. The instruments look good… You go to full afterburner, and you’re on your way. And like I said, the takeoff portion takes about 20 seconds. When you hit 180 [knots], you’re going to start bringing the nose up because you don’t have any flaps, so you’re looking for the airplane to start getting a lift because of the speed, and so you’re going to lift off with a 210 indicated, 210 translates to about 230 miles an hour, and then continue the nose up to 15 to 20 degrees because you’re going to be accelerating pretty quickly.

Like I said, you pass through 20,000 feet less than two minutes from the time you start. You just go through the routine. You’re gonna see the tanker. I’d seen many tankers before. Of course, this my first time in the SR. 

One advantage to me and guys coming out of fighters is that sometimes fighters had the same behind-the-power-curve problem [when refueling], so you would end up having to light one of your afterburners and do the same process in a fighter because of the weight of the fuel. And maybe we didn’t carry bomb loads in the RF-4, but maybe I had three tanks, a center tank and two wing tanks that increased my weight up to the point that I was actually starting to slip behind the power curve.

You come back in, and the instructor is going to demonstrate the first landing, and then you’re going to go back out, and he’s going to have you do an ILS — instrument landing system — approach and touchdown, and then you go back out, and you may do a second one, or you may do a precision radar approach. And then you’re going to get into visual approaches. You’re going to come down, and into the runway, you’re going to go around with a closed pattern, so you can get more practice touch-and-goes until you get it down. If you’re in the traffic pattern, when we had about 7,000 pounds of fuel left, we would land the airplane at that point. We never wanted to get really low in case something should occur because we needed to have enough fuel to get down to McClellan or Sacramento Airport [to divert].

Q: How long did your first flight last, how fast did you go and how high?

A: That first flight was two and a half hours. I reached about 25,000 feet, and probably hit 0.9 Mach for a little while. Then you fly around. You do not go supersonic. Your first supersonic flight is going to be your second flight.

Q: Did you first fly in the two-seater (SR-71B)? 

A: We all flew in the two-seater first as a pilot for our initial pilot checkout.

Q: How does the B-variant fly differently from the A?

A: The SR-71 B-model flies just like the A-model mission operational aircraft.

Q: Was there a tradition to celebrate your first flight?

A: There were some people that met you. I think my family was there, but that’s not the important flight. That’ll come two days, two flights later. You know, people, other current crew members, pilots, and RSOs and my instructor pilot will come out and say, “Hey, congratulations, Buz.” But then, the real important one: your second flight. You’re gonna take off. You’re gonna go to the tanker. You’re gonna refuel, but now you’re gonna drop off the tanker, and you’re gonna start. And you go supersonic. You would start a climb from 25,000 feet at 0.9 Mach, and you would climb up. And we typically would go up to 33,000 because they did not want you supersonic below 30,000 feet because of the shock.

So at 30,000, 33,000 feet, you push the nose over, go full afterburner, and as you’re coming down, you’re going to accelerate really fast. And this is the high drag zone of the SR-71. So as you’re coming down, you’re going to go through the speed of sound very easily. Now you’re going to see [Mach] 1.05, 1.1, and about that point, then you’re going to start bringing the nose up and pick up your climb speed and basically use that climb speed until you’re fairly high up when you’re going to pick up a Mach, and that first supersonic flight, you’re going to fly it at 2.8 Mach, and I know this may sound unique, but at 2.8 Mach, this airplane is actually quite docile.

That’s the low speed. The sensitivity of the airplane is still there, but it’s fairly low. 

Your third flight is Mach 3, and you do the same practice, you do the refueling. You come back in. You shoot patterns, but when you land this time, people come out, typically the wing commander, and he’s got a Mach 3 tie tack he’s going to give you. And all kinds of people are going to be out there because this is a significant time; you’ve had your Mach 3 flight. But there’s something else significant with it. You get to buy the bar that night, and we were always glad to buy the bar because that meant we’d finally had our Mach 3 flight, and we were part of the group. 

Q: What was it like when you reached Mach 3 for the first time?

A: The aircraft actually reacts quite well. The thing that surprised you, or not surprised you, but it’s the first time you get to see the curvature of the Earth, the beautiful black sky up above, and the blue below you. It’s also very quiet. You are in a spacesuit, but you’re traveling at three times the speed of sound. The sound’s behind you. You can feel vibrations in the airplane.

Later on, when you’ve flown this airplane for a while, you can actually feel at certain times when boost pumps are kicking out because that particular fuel tank is going dry, and little sensitivities like that. You’re very busy monitoring the cockpit instruments to make sure the airplane is doing exactly what you want it to do, because it can deviate. And what they’re looking for is we want pilots and RSOs that are going to make sure the airplane is doing what the mission calls for and the way it’s supposed to be flown.

So there’s an adjustment as you change temperatures aloft. The airplane’s going to fly a little differently, so you’re going to make adjustments. If you’re going from warm air to colder air because of a frontal passage, as soon as the engines get that colder air, the airplane wants to accelerate because now the air is denser, and the engines are producing more thrust. It’s a dynamic environment. This is not the kind of airplane that you sit back and put the autopilot on and let it do its thing. 

You have an autopilot on, but the only thing the autopilot does is keep it on that track that the mission was planned for. 

We don’t put any altitude hold on, because we allow the airplane — as it burns off fuel — to continue to climb. So you’re in a constant climb as the airplane becomes lighter and lighter, and with that, your fuel flow continues to go down. The higher you go, you’re carrying less weight. The amount of fuel you’re burning per mile or per minute is dropping, because the engines are becoming more and more efficient. It’s the only airplane in the world — because the way our engine inlets and nozzles are engineered — that the faster we go, the less fuel we burn. You talk about any other airplane you can think of. If you’re going to go faster, it’s going to cost you on fuel. It’s not the case with the SR.

Q: What altitude did you reach on that first Mach 3 flight?

A: 81,000 — 80,000 feet, something like that.

Q: How difficult was it to get used to the SR-71’s cockpit and all its additional gauges?

A: The core part of the cockpit were the attitude indicators, and it was very much like the F-4-type airplanes, the RF-4 that I came out of. You just had a lot more round dials and gauges because of the supersonic flight that was going to be involved with this airplane. In the RF-4 during test flights, I needed to bring the airplane, I think to 2.1 Mach. And you only did it momentarily because you were burning a tremendous amount of fuel, so you didn’t have all the different things that you were monitoring. 

In the SR, you developed a way to cross-check so that you were constantly making sure that the engines and everything were performing correctly. That’s part of what you’d learned already in the simulator, and now you had it in the airplane. And now, you could see how some of the conditions — like actual operating engines and changing weather environment — affected you when you’re flying the airplane.

Q: Weather and atmospheric conditions play a big role in how the SR-71 flew, right?

A: That’s correct. Early on, when they were flying — we never overflew Russia or Red China — but we’d fly right on their border, and some of the early flights off the north coast of Russia. It may sound kind of strange to you, but there was some really warm air. You study in school that at 80,000 feet, the outside air should be about minus 50 degrees, 55 degrees, somewhere in there. The pressure is about 0.4 pounds per square inch. I’ve seen air as warm as minus 40. Now you’ll say, ‘But gee, that doesn’t seem like a big deal.’ It’s a huge difference on the engine because now the air is a lot thinner. But I’ve also seen the other scale off the north coast of Russia. I’ve seen minus 90 degrees. Now, when you starting pumping minus 90 degree air into the engine, it really wants to race because now the air is that much denser, and the engines are producing more thrust.

Q: How difficult was Blackbird to fly? How did it compare to other aircraft? What was the biggest challenge to learning to fly at speed and altitude? 

A: One of the biggest challenges, if you came out of a fighter airplane, is that we could pull seven Gs. That’s what they were built for. The SR-71, because it expands in flight with heating, the G limit is 1.7 Gs. You’ve had that in a sharp turn in the car, clearly on a roller coaster, and that’s why we were limited to 45 degrees of bank because that’s 1.7 Gs being pulled. Now, if the airplane is cold, has not expanded, we can pull 3 Gs, but you can see it’s a much, much more limiting. Like if you’re cruising at Mach 3 and you want to make a turn, the radius is going to be around 75 degrees, around 75 miles. So you’re looking at 150 miles from where you are until you get over to do a complete 180 degree turn heading the other direction. So there’s a lot more of a planning factor on how much because you can’t yank and bang this airplane because when it’s expanded, you could bend it and titanium is really hard to repair.

Q: Did that ever happen to you?

A: It didn’t. But at an air show in England, one of the guys pulled more Gs than he should have, and the airplane flew once or twice more. And everybody said there was something wrong with this airplane. It was grounded. I don’t know how they got it back to the States, but it never flew again.

Q: How did the chine surfaces, those sloped surfaces at the edge of the fuselage, affect flight?

A: They gave you more lift. Other than that, it obviously limited your visibility somewhat because they’re flared out.

Q: Give me a sense of your visibility in the SR-71 cockpit. What can you see and what can’t you see?

A: Well, one thing, you’re in a spacesuit. So, think about from the middle of your body, you can’t see aft of where your arms are. That’s all by feel. So everything you do in the cockpit, your sense of feel is considerably reduced. As you look forward, the two side windows are great for looking around. Many times we have multiple tankers because of how far the tankers had to go to be in our refueling position. 

For our refueling track off the north coast of Norway, those tankers had to fly five hours to get there. So we would typically have three tankers to make sure that they could give us the fuel we needed. The windows you used most were those two pie [-shaped] windows in the front, because that’s what you’re going to be looking through when you take off. That’s what you’re looking through when you’re refueling, and that’s what you’re looking through when you come in to land. Now the side window you might browse a little bit when you come in to land to see, particularly in the trainer [SR-71B], how am I aligned with things that I know are along the runway to make sure I’m in the center per se. Because once you bring that nose up in the trainer, you can’t see forward. The runway disappears.

Q: Did you have any close calls during training?

A: Not during training. Later flying operationally, I did. I took off from a runway where the wind was exceeding 50 knots, and the airfield was closed. This was in Okinawa, but Washington, D.C., wanted the flight off because it was critical that the SR show up in an area at a certain time. 

I came back from another flight to Kadena where water had gotten into some of the systems. One of the afterburners didn’t light. I couldn’t get it to light, so I came back in. It’s a dual runway. The weather was about 200 feet [ceiling], half a mile visibility, and the radar controller put me on the wrong runway. And as I was breaking out [of the clouds], there was a DC-10 full of passengers, so I had to go around, and I’m starting to lose instruments. Doing a circling approach in an SR-71 is really hard, but fortunately I had been stationed there before, so I kind of knew the ground track I needed to maintain, so I could come around and successfully find the runway and put it down, which I did.

About the same time period, around 1979, 1980, coming back from a night mission to RAF Mildenhall, there had been some thunderstorms through England, and the weather in England was terrible. There was not an air base that was above minimums, so I was told that there was a tanker airborne waiting to give us fuel so we could fly to Madrid to Torrejón Air Base, the U.S. Air Force base there. But we were going to have a special mission in two days. The White House or the national security advisor had directed it, and I knew if I flew to Torrejón, by the time you got all the support equipment down there, there was no way we could make that mission.

As SR pilots, we had different rules than the rest of the pilots in the Air Force. If you’re a regular pilot in the Air Force and the airfield goes below minimums, you mandatorily have to go to the alternate location. You can’t shoot an approach. That was not the case in the SR-71. We had the option to shoot the approach to see if we could land, and if we couldn’t land, then you went to the alternate. 

One of the things in the back seat, the RSO had a periscope. He could look straight down, and he could also adjust the periscope so it could look, I think, 35 degrees forward. So that particular night, I mean, it is pea soup fog. I mean, it is terrible. I’m coming in. Oh, and the ILS had been hit by lightning, so there was no ILS. I’m using a British radar controller, who is good. 

As we’re coming in, my back-seater John said, ‘Okay, I’m looking down, and I can see you’re on center line because I can see through the periscope the lights passing underneath the airplane.’ So we landed the airplane successfully. I brought it to a stop. The controller had forgotten to tell Mildenhall that I was coming in to land. They thought the airfield was closed, so when I called them and said, ‘Mildenhall Tower, this is so-and-so. Send out progressive [taxi instructions]. I can’t find the taxiway to be led back to the hangar where I have to put this airplane.’ And the controller came back and said, ‘You can’t be here. We’re closed.’ I said, ‘We’re here, sitting on the runway. Just get me a follow-me [truck] to get me back to where I need to park.’

Q: Tell me about the RSO relationship during flights. What was the RSO’s role and how did you communicate?

A: If you flew an operational mission, it had to be with your formed RSO. Couldn’t be with anybody else. The RSO ran the navigation system, the star tracker, did any updates required there. The RSO turned on and ran the cameras. Radar nose if it was going. The RSO ran the checklists. The defensive systems were all in the back. All the indicators about whether we were being tracked or being shot at — that was all in the back. He did the radio calls on training missions over the United States. I would do them in the traffic pattern, taking off and landing, but the rest of the radio calls were done from the back seat as we went from center to center. 

He was the orchestrator back there. The pilot flew the airplane, took care of the refueling, made sure that it’s on track, and we’re doing what we’re doing. But the guy in the back is the one that’s the synthesizer.

The cockpit is really small. It would have been really tough to have carried a map and folding it and trying to move it. So the [the map was on 35 millimeter film], and it moved at your ground speed, and would show you, ‘okay, you got a turn coming up. This is the fuel you should have. RSO, you need to turn on this camera. You need to check that your defensive systems are on and working before you enter denied airspace.’ So the RSO was a very critical function. We trained and flew together for four years.

Q: Walk me through your first operational mission. When was it? How was your preparation process different from others, and what did you do? What was the mission?

A: Um, I won’t say it was a vanilla mission, but it was the one where you’re going to go to Kadena because we can keep track of you the best there, and the missions are more controlled. So your first operational mission, you would have flown a local mission where you’re mostly flying around the island and doing stuff and just landing at Kadena. That would have been March of ’77, and your first mission. The thing that makes it different is you go through the same preparation, but the day before, you’re going to go in and do more of a mission planning. What does the mission look like? Where are the turns? Where are the things I need to be concerned about? And then the day of the mission, they’re going to come in and say, ‘Okay, this is what the weather is. This is what any intelligence activity you need to know of. These are special instructions from the State Department that might provide additional limiting factors on you that you have to take into consideration.’

That’s all around the time you’re having your breakfast, getting ready to go. You go down, you suit up like you normally would. There’s no difference in starting the airplane up. It’s a little more critical this time to make sure your tankers are where they’re supposed to be, and typically your first mission is probably going to be along the Korean DMZ. It’s going to be a two-and-a-half-hour sortie. You’re going to take off. You’re going to refuel at 25,000 feet. Head up the west coast of Korea. You’re going to see the Yellow Sea. Make a big sweeping right turn, and you’ll come north of Seoul. You go very close to the DMZ all the way across. Do a big turn over the Sea of Japan. Come back the same direction along the DMZ. Then turn south and come back and land, and this will probably be your first operational mission.

Q: What were you collecting? What kind of sensors did you have?

A: Oh, we would have the side cameras that could look out about 30 miles in. We might have the nose camera. The electronic sensors could pick up any radio, radar, other type of electronic signals out to about 350 miles anywhere around us. So you’d be sensing what the North Koreans have that was active at that time to better understand what their defense posture is, where missile sites were located, and things along those lines.

The side camera was a camera controlled by the computer. All you did was turn it on because of the astro tracker. We navigated directly off the stars, we didn’t navigate off the ground. We guaranteed the president 300 feet anywhere in the world traveling at 2,200 miles an hour. This is long before GPS, and so the president and the people around him had great — six presidents used us — comfort knowing that we would go where they wanted us to go, and in all likelihood we’d come back. 

We weren’t going to get shot down, which never happened, so they wouldn’t have to deal with some kind of a hostage situation or some kind of a diplomatic problem. That was just part of it. 

Later on, when I flew a flight for President Carter when the Saudis and the Yemenis were at war over their border, the nose camera was in there. The nose camera took a picture 72 miles wide, 36 miles either side of center, and in the center your resolution was two to four inches. You can see people, you can see tanks, cars, all kinds of things. You cannot recognize faces.

There’s another nose that came in while I was flying, probably in 1977, a ground-mapping radar, because there’s parts of the world where the sun rarely shines. So if you’re waiting for that picture, you may never get it. So you can’t see people with that. Cars are hard to identify. It’s more of an electronic blob, but a ship, an airplane, things like that, that would be on the ground or at sea, there’s enough radar return that most of the time they may not be able to give it the exact airplane or ship, but they know what kind it was, so that day or night, in any weather, when an enemy is trying to move things around that you can’t see, you could actually pick up what their activities are.

Q: You talked about working with other assets for collection missions and a lot of coordination. What did those include?

A: Other assets in our coordinated collection missions included other aircraft, ships at sea, land sites collecting and satellites overhead. Timing was important on these operations. I had as many as 28 sensors I was stimulating the Russians for.

Q: Give me an overall sense of your operational missions. What were the goals and what permissions did you need?

A: There’s something that’s still done today called the ‘Beige Book,’ and they go through, and it’s all the services, including submarines, and all that. Okay, what are we interested in? What are we going to plan? How important is the target? How much risk do these targets pose to the collectors, but also politically? If we do this, are there political consequences? And this goes to the whole government, including the State Department, CIA. So they publish this. 

Now, when something occurs like the battle with Yemen that just pops up, then things are reprioritized.

Overflights are typically approved by the president, but sometimes by the National Security Adviser. Not below that level per se. The missions where you’re flying peripherally around Russia, around China, other places in the world, those would be approved as part of the monthly schedule. Places we overflew. I mean, we overflew Cuba every 45 days. We did work in Central America. After I left, I think there were some that went down to Colombia. I am one of the only two pilots that ever took the airplane to Diego Garcia. Originally, we were looking at that as a possible base to use to go image Iran and come from a different direction than we had in the past because they were much like today, harassing ships with their missiles and other stuff. We flew over North Korea a couple times.

Q: Did you ever fly over North Korea?

A: I didn’t, but the airplane did. 

Q: How did you navigate?

A: We used the star catalog. We had 58 stars that were the northern stars that we used for tracking. To give you an idea. Took them an hour and 45 minutes to load our mission in the tracker, and we called it after the fact R2-D2 because it always knew where we were. It was told exactly where it was on the face of the earth to start. After we started the engines and we’re ready to taxi, when you came out of the hangar, if it was a clear day or clear night, within two minutes, the RSO in the back seat would get a starlight, and what that told you is we’re now automatically tracking the stars day or night, and it was a really accurate system.

It was a wonderful system to fly with, but it also gave the planners and our leaders [the confidence] that if we can fly within 300 feet, like let’s say the north coast of Russia, well, most airplanes are going to have to put you a couple miles off just because we’re not sure exactly where you are. In our case, we could fly maybe 500 feet off their international border because we knew we would be exactly where we were supposed to be, and that was one of the great advantages.

Another great advantage was we had great range. There was a special mission that I flew. The Navy had lost track of a couple boomers [Russian nuclear ballistic missile submarines]. They’d come out of Murmansk, up there in northern Russia, and had slipped through what we call the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap, and so we were tasked for a quick reaction. And in this particular case, there was a a second SR that took off after me. To show you the importance of the mission, if I was not mission-capable at Goose Bay, the second SR, one hour behind me, was going to pick up the mission.

I was fully ready, so we proceeded across the Atlantic north of Norway. We refueled again. We did the double pass past Murmansk. I saw [the Russian submarines] once or twice making their way to the Arctic Ocean on the surface as the inland waters were too shallow to dive.

We refueled again off the north coast, crossed the Atlantic, refueled over Goose Bay, Labrador, came across Canada, and at 8:20 in the morning, Saturday morning, I landed back at Beale Air Force Base.

Q: What other countries have you flown over?

A: I’ve flown over Cuba. Obviously, flown in the Middle East, over Egypt, down to Yemen. Over West Germany. In the Pacific, we did more peripheral flights, and peripheral were sometimes actually more sensitive because they put you close to the border, and there were a lot of potential political issues.

For instance, around 1978 or 1979, I had a major emergency on the DMZ, and to follow what I needed to do to clear the problem — which had to do with the inlets — I needed to roll the airplane out, but I was already in a turn. If I’d rolled the airplane out, I would have overflown North Korea, which would have possibly been a political violation. So I had to keep the airplane in a turn. The airplane was damaged. I had to land at one of our U.S. Air Force bases in South Korea and have maintenance come up and work on the airplane, just to avoid a possible incident. 

I’ll show you the difference between presidents. When President Ford’s term was coming to an end, he knew that President Carter felt it was immoral to overfly other countries and unethical. So we were flying over Cuba every 45 days to keep track of the Russians and the Cubans per se. So, on his last day in office, President Ford had tasked us: you were to take off, you’re to overfly Cuba, you have to land back in California. This was on the 20th of January, 1977. Not later than 10 minutes before Carter takes the oath of office, I was in the wing commander’s office when we called the White House and said, ‘Mission complete, aircraft on the ground.’

For a year, we didn’t overfly anybody because Carter thought it was immoral, and then he realized the Russians were doing stuff in Cuba we weren’t seeing. There were, you know, parts of the world that the SR had unique capabilities that he was foregoing because of his political view. So that changed.

Q: Why?

A: It changed because we were having intelligence failures, because we were being surprised with things that were taking place that our collection systems, had they been used like they were designed, would have probably picked up.

Q: Was the SR-71 used as a psychological weapon against adversaries?

A: Sort of. We sometimes flew over heads of state greeting each other and they would be covered with an excellent sonic shock wave to remind them they were doing things counter to U.S. and/or NATO policies. In the three days before Noriega decided to leave Panama, SR-71 aircraft overflew his home with the sonic boom to advise him it was time to go.

Q: Did you ever fly over China?

A: We did not overfly China. U-2s did, but the SR never overflew China. Now this will surprise you. Sometimes I’ve flown missions that the Russians knew ahead of time that I was going to be right on their border at a certain time, and the reason for that was that they really wanted to shoot down and get their hands on an SR. So when we would be into an area like other reconnaissance airplanes, they would hardly pay attention to it. We would go in the area, and a lot of their radars and other stuff would come up very closely, monitoring what we were doing. 

So I landed in Okinawa, Japan, and the head of NSA for the Far East had been there and asked me, ‘Was there any unusual activity today?’ And I said, ‘No, about the same number of fighters tried to come up to intercept me, and I never had a missile fired at me.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s unexpected. We told the Russians yesterday where you were going to be today, hoping that we’d get some greater fidelity on the collection.’ So they had great confidence we were going to come back.

Q: How close did the Russian fighters get to you?

A: Not that close. We were really a tough target. They would try to make a head-on [interception] with a conversion [turn]. Well, by the time they made a conversion, they had the same problem. They had to be above Mach 2 to come after us. By the time they made the turn, we were 100 miles down the road.

Q: The SR-71 had a reduced radar signature. Did this help in its survivability, or was it the speed and the electronic warfare capabilities that largely kept SR-71 crews safe?

A: It was a combination of capabilities that gave it such a remarkable survival capability. To start with, the stealthiness made it hard to find until it was very close to you, significantly compressing an enemy’s reaction timelines. Extremely high speed, Mach 3.2, and incredible altitude, up to 85,000 feet, put its operations in a difficult area to attack. If they did get contact and decided to engage you — all the missiles of our era had to be guided to the high-speed maneuvering target as they did not have onboard guidance capability. When the electronic jamming system became active, the adversary lost their ability to communicate with their missile, so basically it followed its last command and went stupid.

Q: I have seen reports that Blackbirds evaded about 4,000 missiles fired by the Soviet Union, North Vietnam, North Korea and India. Is that accurate?

A: No, it’s not.

Q: How many would you say? 

A: The number of missiles wasn’t well-tracked. I flew a mission on the Korean DMZ, and they were playing with me. When I say playing, they were using their long-range [radar]. Then the acquisition radar came up that was trying to ready for the missile, but the missile was never armed. 

Six weeks later, my buddy had three missiles fired at him. So there were probably no more than 100. Part of the thing was they gave up. I mean, particularly over Vietnam, that’s where most of the missiles were fired, and they were just not working. And how many missiles do you want to fire to try to get an airplane?

 

Q: What were the orders if things went terribly wrong? Were there places you absolutely could not land at and had to destroy the aircraft instead of letting it fall into enemy hands? What about if the crew was captured after ejecting?

A: The aircraft was not to go into enemy hands. And in some cases not even allies’ hands. If the aircraft was impossible to control and out of control — ejection might be your only option. It was the safest USAF aircraft I ever flew. There were a total of 12 ejections in the test program and in operations. None were ever caused by enemy actions. There was never a USAF SR-71 crew member ever killed flying this aircraft — an incredible record! We all went to a special survival school to understand what we might expect if captured by an enemy which never happened or came even close to happening.

Q: What was the closest interception threat?

A: Probably the closest the Russians ever got to a successful intercept had nothing to do with their initial work. There’s a crew; they’re flying the Baltic, so they’re Mach 2.8. They head up past Lithuania, Latvia, and as they beam Estonia, the right engine explodes. The turbines come apart. So now you’re a single-engine airplane. You’re not going to be at Mach. You’re going to be probably around 12,000 feet subsonic. So the crew announces Mayday, starts a turn. They probably overflew some Soviet airspace. They start this big turn. The Swedes pick up the fact that they hear a Mayday call, and they have a pair of [Saab] Viggens that are airborne that are actually armed.

So as they make the turn, they descend. Get the airplane under control. The Russians send five flights of MiGs to come out. They’ll also send out a rescue helicopter with the idea maybe they can capture the SR crew. Some of those MiGs that were coming out we were sure were directed to shoot down the SR if it wouldn’t follow their signals.

But when they got there, all of a sudden they find there’s a Swedish Viggen on either wing. So the Russians decided this is not a good idea. Halfway down, the two Viggens were low on fuel. The Swedes sent two more Viggens up that replaced them, sat on the wings, continued their mission, and when they got to a certain point, United States Air Force F-15s came out of Germany, intercepted, joined with the SR-71, and led it to a safe landing on an air base in northern Germany. 

The mission was classified for years and years. The Swedes wouldn’t even acknowledge it took place because they were a neutral country per se. One of my classmates from the academy, who was a lieutenant general, found out about it and said, ‘We’ve got to do something.’ So, in a very rare occasion, they put through the paperwork, and those four Swedish pilots at a ceremony in Stockholm were given United States Air Force Air Medals for what they did that day to save the airplane. That’s the closest that we ever came to actually losing an SR-71 that would have been related to combat. (You can read more about that award ceremony in our story about the event here.)

Q: What’s the highest you’ve flown? What’s the fastest?

A: My top speed is 3.35 Mach before I slowed it back down to 3.2 Mach because we got into cold air and the airplane really wanted to accelerate. My highest altitude is a little over 85,000 feet. Those were in the late ’70s, early ’80s. I don’t remember the specifics. 

The high-speed one was off the north coast of Russia when I got into really cold air. You can’t just come out afterburner to try to slow the airplane down because you risk then having a compressor stall. So what you had to do was force the airplane into a climb, and as it was climbing, break its ability to maintain that speed. So once you got it back to the speed you wanted, you’d kind of lower the nose to where you wanted to cruise and go from there.

The faster you went in this airplane, the more dangerous it was, and the more sensitive it became, and that was part of the reason why 3.2 Mach — that’s where the inlets and the engines and the nozzles and everything was optimized for, because they were really afraid you had what we call an “unstart.” That’s when you lose a shock out of one of the inlets, and now the other engine is producing 100%. This engine is still running, but it’s only producing 30%. The airplane goes into a violent yaw and can pitch up on you. They were afraid there wasn’t enough flight control to be able to control the airplane.

Q: Was it harder to fly at that speed?

A: It’s just more sensitive. As you made inputs, the airplane was more reactive, and you had to be on your toes because if you had an unstart at that point, you needed to make sure that you prevented the airplane from doing a yaw slice and particularly pitching up.

One time off the coast of China around 1978 or 1979, I had an unstart and the nose started up. Of course John [the RSO] knew that we had an unstart, because you can’t miss it. You get banged up in the cockpit. I had to stick full forward, and I told John, I said, ‘we’ve got about three or four potatoes.’ That means in three or four seconds, if that nose doesn’t stop climbing, we’re going to have to leave this airplane because it’s going to disintegrate.

Q: You flew over Area 51 and later oversaw its funding when you were at the Pentagon. What is it like?

A: When I did the test flights in Area 51, I had to go through and do some briefings and sign off on stuff. I’m an Area 51 guy. I mean, I’ve been on the ground there. I was responsible for their funding for a couple years, and I used to take guests out there on certain occasions who needed to see something or understand something. It’s great. It looks like the movie The Martian. It’s God forbidden, but it’s a great place to do classified testing because it’s the only place in the country we can do that pretty much successfully. 

Before I left the Pentagon, I completed the paperwork to withdraw 75,000 more acres of land that sat on a hillside. So now your closest point to have a direct view of the complexes is from 26 miles away at [Tikaboo Peak].

Q: Let’s talk about the present. Obviously, the Blackbirds are big news with rampant speculation about the future of Tail 844. What do you know about this, and what do you think that NASA is planning for it?

A: I think we know a number of things. The airplane’s been outside for what 30 years, so it may need some repair. NASA is trying to inspire the current and future generations about X planes. 

One right now that’s got everybody’s attention is the X-59 that will start flying over the United States here pretty soon, and it’s to measure whether we have successfully come up with a shape that reduces the intensity of the Mach shock wave. Because where this will lead to is there’s a couple companies… that want to create a supersonic transport. One of the limitations on the Concorde, no European country would ever allow it to overfly. Nor did we, because that tremendous wing space created a really significant shock wave on the ground.

In the SR-71, we broke windows. I can remember a particular Cuban overflight. I came around, I did a descent over Mississippi. My tanker was over Mississippi. I refueled. Gave me enough fuel to get back to California. When I landed, the director of operations for the wing had left a message that when I got out of my spacesuit, give him a call. So I called him. I said, ‘Col. Lawson, what can I do?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, Buz, how’d the mission go?’ And I said, ‘You don’t ask me how the mission goes, unless there’s something you’re particularly [interested in]. What is it?’ He says, ‘Well, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There’s 30 houses that have fewer windows, and we’re pretty sure it was you.’

We couldn’t predict where the shock would go. Now [what] we know from some of the tests is, that when you’re in a turn, a turning descent like I was, sometimes the shock wave actually concentrates and becomes more violent than it would if you’d passed over straight and level. So what the X-59 is trying to do is see if they can successfully get a shape and controls, so they can build this supersonic transport that, in fact, can fly over normal airspace.

Q: Former NASA Blackbird engineer Tim Connors told us that he thinks that they’re going to use Tail 844 as a high-speed engine testbed. What’s your assessment of that?

A: It doesn’t make sense. It is high speed, but we’ve done all that. All that data is there. I mean, we’ve got hundreds of hours at Mach 3 and above that they don’t need to, and we’ve got air chambers now that can run the air at those Mach speeds to take a look at. I mean, they’re looking at the hypersonic. They’d like to have an engine like the J-58 that you could take off at a normal speed, and somewhere around Mach 3, you could open valves or do something that you could then accelerate to Mach 5 or Mach 6, and then when you were through with what you wanted to do, come back, and then go down through the Mach 3…2…1, and recover safely back at wherever you want.

Author’s note: Being able to test this exact transition area between Mach 3 and Mach 4, approaching hypersonic, potentially for a combined cycle engine like Buz describes, is what some think NASA will use the SR-71 for.

I mean, basically that’s what the SR did. Except we went to Mach 3. The big transition in the SR-71 took place in Mach 2. Because when you hit Mach 2 or thereabouts, that’s when those bypass tubes, the six of them around the engine, started bypassing air around the engine, and the air, the engine inlet, everything became a pseudo-ramjet. Because the faster you went, the more thrust you were creating by the ram thrust, not by the thrust being created by the engine itself. The engine had to run; it was critical to the whole process, but the vast majority of the larger part of the thrust was being created by the bypass.

Q: Do you think other aircraft came after Blackbird, even experimentally, that broke its speed records? If so, why haven’t we seen them all these years later?

A: No operational jet-powered manned aircraft has come along to break the significant records we set 50 years ago.

Q: So what is NASA going to use Tail 844 for?

A: I think they’re going to try to see how useful is it. Something that’s sat outside with blowing sand and everything else — it’s really hard to know.

Q: How how difficult will it be for modern test pilots to fly Tail 844 or whatever aircraft is created from this project? 

A: It would be challenging because there’s no simulator that works, and the simulator helps you go through all the things that you might face to successfully save the airplane. I mean, we consider the SR a national asset, so the last thing we were going to do was eject from the airplane. If you don’t have that simulator, it’s going to be much more difficult. 

Q: And the simulators don’t exist anymore?

A: The simulator sits down in a museum in Texas. It’s not operable.

Q: Was boosting the speed of the SR-71 ever discussed during your career, and if so, what were the options considered to make that happen?

A: It was. The idea was that they were going — I can’t remember where it was a water injection or something — that they could take the SR up to 3.5 and beyond. I may have this wrong, but the SR shape and the materials that make up the body of the airplane, I think are good up to [Mach] 3.8, maybe even 4, and this was going to be a water injection that for 10 minutes you could take the airplane up to a faster speed. I think it was [Mach] 3.5, but it may have been [Mach] 3.6. But when they looked at the weight and all the different things, it was the Lockheed proposal. The decision was made. You didn’t gain that much by raising the speed because we were fully authorized to go to [Mach] 3.3.

I’ll tell you a number of my contemporaries never went there. When I was an instructor pilot, I made sure my student went there because if you needed to go there, I wanted you to feel the sensitivity of the airplane when you’re at those speeds.

Q: So was the idea to flow liquid to cool the air going into the inlets?

A: I think that’s where it was. It was in that area, but it’s been so long. I don’t remember. But that never went anywhere, and it only gave you 10 minutes. Because the critical temperature on the airplane was not the airplane. In the cockpit, the CIT — compressor inlet temperature — we were not to exceed 427 centigrade, which is about 800 degrees [Fahrenheit]. Pratt & Whitney said beyond that point, our modeling says that you’re at a higher risk of the engine failing.

Q: Conners told us that during his time in the SR-71 program, he investigated whether it was possible to get the Blackbird close to Mach 4. Do you think a Blackbird could approach Mach 4 with the proper modifications?

A: The question is, what will Mach 4 give you? And I think the focus is more on unmanned vehicles that are Mach 5, Mach 6.

Q: Why?

A: You look at the weight that’s in an airplane to keep a man alive — that’s quite a penalty you’re paying. And when you get up to Mach 5 and Mach 6, the temperatures you’re dealing with are — it’s on a curve that is accelerating up, and the materials you have to use and try to put a person in there — it doesn’t make sense.

Q: How would the shock waves affect the ability to exceed Mach 3.3?

A: Obviously, they’re going to become steeper. At Mach 3.2, the shock sits just on the outer lip of the inlet. That is dealing with part of the shape of the airplane. Again, this is what was designed as your optimum speed.

Q: If you were a betting man, what would you say the odds are of the Blackbird flying again?

A: I could see it if they wanted to fly it for inspiration, particularly subsonic. The airplanes I’ve flown a couple times subsonic because we had some maintenance problems. 0.9 Mach. It’s a sweet airplane.

Q: Do you see it flying again?

A: I think part of the problem is engines that haven’t been used in those numbers of years. How difficult is it going to be for you to put them back in service? Because there’s no spare engines. When the program was taken apart finally in 2007, a number of those engines were ground up. Foolishly, they were ground up. So there’s not a lot of spares out there.

Q: So what’s NASA’s goal for Tail 844?

A: I think the goal is inspirational. I give tours regularly at the Air and Space Museum, and you’ve got multi generations that still love the SR. I just came back from organizing an SR-71 weekend down at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base, and people come from all over to talk to us and see the airplane. When you look at it, young people can’t believe this airplane — like the one in the Smithsonian — came off the production line in 1966. It came off the production line before their parents were born. Yet you look at it, and partly because of the Star Wars influence, you think, ‘Oh, is it a space plane? Is it an airplane?’ I mean, it is something that creates visions and dreams, and I think that’s what NASA is trying to get back to: use it as a a dream generator to fly again. I don’t know. A number of people have already said that they can’t believe it’s going to fly. So it could fly, but I would say that the odds are against it.

 

Q: You’re at docent at the Udvar Hazy Center. What’s the scuttlebutt there about the plan for Tail 844?

A: They’re as clueless as everybody else.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

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Men before a British court charged under the National Security act over an alleged, attempted Iranian state-backed guerrilla attack.

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General Atomics has tapped Spirit Defense, a subsidiary of Boeing, to help produce FQ-42A Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones. This follows the U.S. Air Force’s announcement last month that it wants to have at least 500 CCAs in inventory by 2032. Years ago, TWZ highlighted the likelihood that industrial partnerships like this would be required to meet the service’s aggressive volume and schedule goals for the CCA program.

General Atomics’ Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI) announced the team-up with Spirit on FQ-42 production earlier today. The Vengenace is one of two designs the Air Force has ordered into production under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program. The other is Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury. The 500-drone target the Air Force has laid out covers a mixed fleet of both FQ-42s and FQ-44s. The service is still planning to acquire additional CCAs, potentially with completely different designs, through a follow-on Increment 2.

When it comes to FQ-42 production, “Spirit Defense’s role as a fuselage design-build partner brings together the company’s engineering and advanced manufacturing capabilities to support the program from design through production,” according to a GA-ASI release. “Partnering with Spirit Defense is a strength multiplier for the company and the nation, offering manufacturing capacity and industrial depth to scale CCA production faster, while strengthening production resilience, and reducing the risk of single points of failure.”

“We’re excited to be working with Spirit Defense,” David R. Alexander, GA-ASI’s President, said in an accompanying statement. “We’ve established our proven design, development, and manufacturing capability for the FQ-42. With Spirit Defense, we add capacity, which is exactly the kind of production resilience our U.S. Air Force customer is looking for with its CCA ramp-up. This kind of partnership represents the scalable industrial base the Air Force and the U.S. Department of War are looking for from industry.”

“The intent for them [the Air Force] is to go up to as many as 500 aircraft by 2032,” Mike Shortsleeve, Vice President for Strategy Business Development at GA-ASI, also told TWZ’s Jamie Hunter on the floor of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September. “We’re ready to do that production.”

At the conference, Shortsleeve highlighted investments in additive manufacturing and advanced robotics, along with efforts to build out the company’s skilled workforce, to help meet those production demands.

General Atomics is already an established drone maker with significant serial airframe production experience of its own. At the same time, the company is seeing growing demand for its MQ-9B series of drones, including a sale to the U.S. Coast Guard announced earlier this month. The MQ-9B design builds on the highly successful MQ-9A Reaper. It is also pursuing a host of other opportunities in the U.S. and abroad that could add production demands.

Mike Atwood, GA-ASI’s Vice President of Advanced Aircraft Programs, notably acknowledged potential hurdles for meeting CCA production demands, specifically, in the past.

“We have basically a hot production line where I can take an MQ-9 out and put a Collaborative Combat Aircraft in,” Atwood said on an edition of The Merge podcast back in 2024. “We were able to essentially take Reaper parts out of stock rooms and build the first [CCA] aircraft.”

“Composites are inherently expensive … they’re really for high-performance applications where you need certain strength and stiffness,” he also noted at that time. “When you look at Collaborative Combat Aircraft … we’re actually falling back on more metallic – what we call hybrid structures, metal frames with composite skins.”

The production of advanced composites and hybrid structures is Spirit’s main business. The company also has a well-established history of working as a subcontractor on military aerospace projects, including in support of bleed-edge programs like the B-21 Raider bomber.

It is also important to note here that, before its founding as an independent company in 2005, Spirit was actually a division of Boeing. By the early 2020s, Spirit had been suffering from significant financial losses and quality control lapses. Boeing subsequently decided to reacquire it in a multi-billion-dollar deal. The acquisition process began in 2024 and was finalized last year. Since then, Boeing has faced continued challenges in getting the firm back on track.

In 2024, when General Atomics and Anduril were selected to move ahead in the Increment 1 phase of the Air Force’s CCA program, TWZ explicitly raised the prospect of both companies bringing in help, especially to meet future production demands. At the time, the focus was more on Anduril, which was not a major airframer at the time and had yet to establish significant production facilities of its own for Fury. It was also unclear then whether the Air Force might pick a single winning Increment 1 drone rather than go the route it ultimately chose of ordering batches of both designs.

However, as we wrote at the time: “No matter who is selected in the end as the prime contractor, a large pool of manufacturer partners will likely be key to meeting the Air Force’s production volume and schedule goals.”

As an aside, Boeing is already in the CCA business itself, with the MQ-28 Ghost Bat developed originally through a separate subsidary in Australia. The company has been working to expand its own production capacity to build those drones in recent years.

Generally speaking, the ability of defense contractors to rapidly scale production to meet U.S. military demands, and do so affordably, is steadily becoming a more common point of discussion across all major acquisition programs. Being able to acquire and field CCAs in relatively large volumes and at a price that makes sense is absolutely central to the whole concept being these drones.

“The nuance here that probably is overlooked, is the fact that they’re [the Air Force] recognizing with 500 that they require, the factory floor is now becoming part of the battle space,” General Atomics’ Shortsleeve had told TWZ at the AFA conference last month. “So the ability for companies to be able to manufacture and produce those aircraft in numbers that are needed for the fight rapidly is going to be a key part to going forward in the future.”

The Air Force is otherwise still very much laying the rest of the groundwork for fielding its future CCAs operationally toward the end of the decade. A full playbook for deploying, launching, recovering, supporting, and otherwise operating CCA-type drones on a day-to-day basis, let alone employing them tactically, still has yet to be written. Answering these questions will be important for other CCA programs across the U.S. military and elsewhere globally.

General Atomics’ new partnership with Spirit Defense underscores how production of Increment 1 CCAs is ramping up already in reponse to the Air Force’s current CCA program goals.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post General Atomics FQ-42 CCA Drone Production Ramp Up To Be Boosted By Boeing Subsidiary appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force is exploring options for adding air-to-air combat capabilities to its bombers as part of efforts adjacent to its latest fighter force structure plans. The service has raised the possibility of the B-21 Raider, specifically, taking on an air-to-air role, and potentially doing so in cooperation with Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, in the past. As TWZ has explored for years, the B-21’s inherent attributes – size, extreme range, high operating ceiling, broadband low-observability (stealthiness), and advanced sensors – could actually make it especially well suited to taking part in air-to-air combat missions. The Air Force’s other bombers could also be part of these future plans.

Aviation Week was first to report on the potential for bombers to help bolster the Air Force’s air-to-air combat capacity after obtaining a copy of a new long-term fighter force structure report submitted to Congress last week. Media coverage of this report first began to appear earlier this week following a roundtable on Tuesday with Lt. Gen. David Tabor, the service’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs. The full report, which is unclassified, was not disseminated to reporters at that time.

The Air Force’s central goal now is having 1,509 combat-coded fighters in inventory by 2035, which is hundreds more than it has in service today. This will come from the acquisition of new F-35As, F-15EXs, and F-47s. There are already questions about how realistic this plan might be, and the service has acknowledged several hurdles it will need to overcome. You can read more about this in our initial reporting here.

“Accordingly, the USAF is also evaluating additional recapitalization options, including a new capacity fighter, increased reliance on CCAs [Collaborative Combat Aircraft], and developing air-to-air capabilities on bombers,” the latest fighter force structure report says, per Aviation Week.

“A new capacity fighter” may refer to the possible acquisition of new-production F-16 Vipers, which Lt. Gen. Tabor said at the roundtable could be an option in the future, according to an earlier story from Air & Space Forces Magazine. He also said making any such decision was not an “urgent” priority. This is just one possibility here. The Air Force has floated ideas for other new fighter concepts beyond the F-47 in recent years. Lockheed Martin has talked about the potential for expanding on the F-35 design.

At the roundtable on Tuesday, Tabor also made clear that the introduction of CCAs would influence future fighter force structure plans, but the expected scale and scope of those impacts remain unclear. He does not appear to have addressed the role bombers could play in this equation at that time. The new fighter report itself does not elaborate further on the potential use of bombers, based on Aviation Week’s story. TWZ is seeking more information.

When it comes to the possibility of Air Force bombers, and the B-21 more specifically, taking on an air-to-air role, this is not the first time the possibility has been raised, as mentioned earlier.

“As the NGAD [Next Generation Air Dominance] review goes forward, like, is it possible that what that ends up with could be the B-21 taking a larger role?” reporter Stephen Losey, working at the time for Defense News, asked then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin at the Military Reporters & Editors (MRE) Conference in 2024.

“We have not taken that off the table,” the Air Force’s top officer said in response to Losey’s question, but did not elaborate.

At that time, the Air Force’s NGAD program was undergoing a deep review, and the future of the sixth-generation fighter component of the effort had come into question. The decision was ultimately made to continue pursuing plans for what has now become the F-47.

For years now, TWZ has been highlighting how the B-21 could serve in multiple roles beyond just that of a traditional bomber, including in an air-to-air capacity. Air Force officials have themselves described the Raider as having multi-mission capabilities, which could extend into the realm of air-to-air combat.

“If we were to characterize it [NGAD] as a fighter, we would be… thinking too narrowly about what kind of airplane we need in a highly contested environment,” then-Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Pleus told what was then just Air Force Magazine back in 2019. This could be “a B-21 that also has air-to-air capabilities” and can “work with the family of systems to defend itself, utilizing stealth – maybe that’s where the sixth-generation airplane comes from.”

Pleus’ comments had tied in with adjacent discussions at the time and thereafter about how the B-21 might operate together with future CCA drones. Pleus, who was subsequently promoted to lieutenant general and whose lasting posting was as Director of Staff at the Air Force’s top headquarters at the Pentagon, retired in August of this year.

It remains unclear how the Air Force might be considering employing the B-21, or any of its other existing bombers, in air-to-air combat. This could entail loading out bombers for direct air-to-air engagements, or the integration of new capabilities to help them find targets or to otherwise enable new supporting roles, or a mix of all of the above. The process of achieving air superiority is not limited to neutralizing aerial threats, either.

As TWZ has written in the past in the context of an air-to-air role for the Raider in particular:

“The Raider has the potential to serve as a launch platform for air-to-air missiles, especially outsized very long-range types. Its payload capacity would give it the ability to carry a large volume of smaller air-to-air missiles, as well. B-21s could also employ air-to-ground munitions in support of the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses mission (SEAD/DEAD), which is also part of the air superiority equation.”

“Maybe most significantly, the B-21s could also act as airborne nerve centers in support of counter-air missions, especially for controlling drones like the Air Force’s planned fleets of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and have the ability to do so even in the most heavily contested of airspaces. Uncrewed aircraft, in turn, could feed targeting data back to Raiders with air-to-air loadouts. B-21s might even be able to launch some of those drones themselves.”

Deeply networked ‘kill webs’ that bring together distributed arrays of sensors and other supporting elements across vast distances and multiple domains, coupled with very-long-range air-to-air missiles, open up new operational possibilities more generally. This applies to Air Force bombers beyond the B-21.

When it comes to longer-range air-to-air missiles, the Navy has notably already fielded the AIM-174B air-launched version of the Standard Missile-6 (SM-6). The service more recently disclosed another such missile in flight testing now, the AIM-424 Malice.

The Air Force has pursued similar missile developments in the past and put out a call for a new anti-air missile with a maximum range of at least 1,000 nautical miles just in June. The service has been exploring multi-stage types with modular designs that could be configured for longer- and shorter-range engagements, as well. These are all just programs we know about, and do not speak to the developments the Air Force and others could have underway in the classified realm.

There is also the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) LongShot program, which the Air Force, as well as the U.S. Army and Navy, have been involved with over the years. The aim of that effort is to demonstrate the concept of an air-to-air missile-carrying drone to help extend the reach and reduce the vulnerability of tactical fighters and bombers.

On top of all this, tactical fighters are generally ill-suited to, and in some cases outright incapable of, carrying the kinds of outsized payloads being discussed here. This underscores the potential value of incorporating bombers into this equation as a means to engage targets at extreme ranges.

Even in a closer proximity support role of fighter aircraft, B-21s, as well as B-52s, could contribute to air-to-air fight as arsenal ships for longer-range weapons, firing on demand from the rear in coordination with crewed and uncrewed platforms operating at the tip of the tactical edge. B-21s could also use their penetrating capabilities to command drones of their own that provide penetrating fighter-like capabilities.

New air-to-air capabilities on Air Force bombers could include self-protection systems, too. Years ago now, the B-21’s prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, patented an anti-missile defense system for stealthy aircraft designed to fire hard-kill interceptors. The Air Force, as well as the Navy, have openly expressed interest in similar defensive capabilities for aerial refueling tankers and other larger planes. Just being able to provide localized close-in defensive ‘bubbles’ around individual bombers could impact the calculus when it comes to future air-to-air combat requirements.

To reiterate, these are all concepts we have discussed in depth for roughly a decade.

Speaking more broadly about Air Force future fighter force structure demands, as we wrote previously:

“In recent years, sustainment costs, broadly, have only become an increasingly serious concern for the Air Force, as well as the other branches of the U.S. military, especially when it comes to complex manned platforms, such as the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Fleet size and the readiness of those fleets are also highly pressing issues. So, at least in the near term, it’s not surprising that NGAD may end up focusing more on exploring available lower-cost options with distributed capabilities as alternatives to traditional air combat assets with highly centralized capabilities, such as manned fighter jets packed with ‘exquisite’ technologies.”

Despite the decision in the end to proceed with the more exquisite F-47, these points have only become more pronounced as time has gone on. How many F-47s the Air Force ultimately intends to buy is another question that looks to remain unanswered by the latest fighter force structure report. At the same time, there are clear signs that the Air Force is planning to significantly increase its planned B-21 fleet size. The official acquisition target has long been at least 100 Raiders, but the Air Force and Northrop Grumman have said a new topline figure is expected to come in the Fiscal Year 2028 budget proposal next year. The service is now explicitly aiming to have at least 500 CCA drones in service by 2032, too. All of this will compete for funding and other resources, at least to a degree.

In the meantime, there has been a “persistent decline in AA [aircraft availability] rates across the USAF tactical fighter fleet,” which “is the direct mathematical consequence of operating an inventory with an average age exceeding 31 years,” the Air Force’s latest fighter force structure report says, according to Aviation Week. “As legacy platforms – such as the F-16C/D, F-15E, and A-10C – operate well beyond their original engineering service lives, they experience compounding structural fatigue, widespread corrosion, and subsystem degradation.”

“Achieving the mandated AA rates required for a peer-conflict scenario necessitates aggressive divestment of the oldest airframes to fund the procurement of highly available, modernized platforms like the F-35A and F-15EX,” the report adds, per that outlet. Furthermore, “to counter the [Chinese] industrial capacity and numerical advantage in fielding fighters like the J-20 and J-16, the USAF must embrace a hybrid force of manned and unmanned systems.”

With all this in mind, active consideration of new air-to-air roles for bombers, as well as the possibility of “increased reliance on CCAs” and the potential to acquire new current-generation F-16s, at least seems to reflect a hedge strategy on the part of the Air Force.

If nothing else, the door clearly remains open to bombers being a key part of the Air Force’s ‘fighter’ vision in the future.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF Confirms Bombers Could Have A Major Air-To-Air Combat Role appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force says any decision on whether or not to acquire new production F-16 Viper fighters is likely a year or more away. The service’s top officer in charge of force structure planning has also now raised the prospect of using a “spectrum of capability” to eventually supplant aging older-model F-16s. All of this comes as the Air Force has laid out a new vision to have 1,509 combat-coded fighters in inventory, hundreds more than it has now, by 2035, amid questions about whether industry and budgets can keep up.

Inside Defense and Air & Space Forces Magazine were among the first to report on the Air Force’s latest long-term fighter force structure plan late yesterday. This followed a roundtable with Lt. Gen. David Tabor, the service’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs. At the time of writing, an unclassified copy of the report, which was submitted to Congress last week, has not been released publicly. TWZ has reached out for more information.

Tabor said yesterday that the target fleet of 1,509 combat-coded fighters by 2035 would be approximately 40 percent F-35s, 40 percent F-15s (inclusive of F-15E Strike Eagles and F-15EX Eagle IIs) and F-16s, and 20 percent F-22 Raptors and F-47s, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. As an aside, the final expected F-47 fleet size remains unclear, though the Air Force continues to say it plans to acquire at least enough of those jets to replace its 185 F-22s on a one-for-one basis.

The current breakdown of the service’s fighter force structure is 45 percent F-16s, 30 percent F-35s, 15 percent F-15s, and 10 percent F-22s. Last year’s long-term fighter force structure report said the service was aiming for an eventual inventory of 1,558 combat-coded fighters and hoped to hit a milestone of 1,369 aircraft by Fiscal Year 2030. As of the start of Fiscal Year 2026, the Air Force had 1,168 combat-coded fighters, not including 103 A-10 Warthog ground attack jets, which have been part of this force structure planning in the past. The plan now is for the last of the A-10s to be retired by 2030. The new 2035 figure also does not include the hundreds of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones the service wants to have acquired by that time, something we will come back to later on.

Currently, the Air Force expects fighter fleet expansion to be driven by the acquisition of new F-35As, F-15EXs, and F-47s. This was also the case when last year’s fighter force structure report was released. The possibility of the Air Force also acquiring new-production F-16s has come up several times in recent years. Most recently, there were several reports last month that prime contractor Lockheed Martin had made a new pitch to the service for a version of the latest Block 70 version of the fighter, tentatively dubbed the F-16G. New Block 70 and Block 72 F-16s, which differ in what engine they use, are being actively produced at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Greenville, South Carolina. At that time, TWZ did a deep dive into the benefits that this could offer the Air Force.

“There is a spectrum of capability that we might want to replace the F-16s with,” Lt. Gen. Tabor said amid a discussion about the prospect of acquiring new Vipers at the roundtable yesterday, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s not urgent, frankly. What we don’t want to get to is a point where it is urgent, and we haven’t done the homework and decided ‘hey, this is really the right place to be.’ We do have time to churn through that and make sure that we have a good option going forward.”

“We’re not in a position where that decision has to be made immediately,” Tabor added, while acknowledging that “we are very conscious” that older-model F-16s are set to begin reaching the end of their lifespans in the 2030s. He also said any such planning was unlikely to be part of the process of developing the service’s Fiscal Year 2028 budget proposal, which will be released sometime early next year.

The Air Force is “in the initial phases of analyzing options for the next Future Years Defense Program,” a spokesperson for the service had told us last month without specifically mentioning any particular type of aircraft. “At this stage, we have neither defined the precise mission requirements nor the spectrum of options that could fill it.”

When it comes to the current F-16 fleet, the Air Force had 774 Vipers in inventory at the start of Fiscal Year 2026 and expected that number to drop to 768, according to past budget documents. This includes a mixture of subvariants, and not all of them are assigned combat-coded units. The Air Force has been substantially upgrading at least a portion of its existing F-16s, including with the addition of new active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and electronic warfare suites, to ensure their operational relevance for years to come.

The Air Force has also already been taking newer F-16s from squadrons transitioning to the F-35 and using them to replace older Vipers in other units. Last year’s fighter force structure report explicitly highlighted plans to supplant Block 30 F-16s in five Air National Guard formations – three combat-coded squadrons and two training units – with Block 40 and 50 types in this way.

As we’ve previously written:

“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.”

…

“The new [F-16G] 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.”

You can read our full prior deep analysis on this topic here.

Lt. Gen. Tabor acknowledged many of these exact same points at the roundtable yesterday. He notably described acquiring new F-16s as “maybe the lazy” option, but also one that would benefit from “practically a ready-made aircraft” that is in production now, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“The question is, can industry produce at those levels?” he also said, speaking more generally. “They’ve assured us that they can, and we believe them, but we also actually need to see it manifest.”

In the context of acquiring new F-16s, especially, it is important to note here that Lockheed Martin order books are very full already as a result of demand for these fighters from U.S. allies and partners. The company’s capacity, at least at present, to add a substantial new Air Force acquisition program on top of that is a real question. This, in some ways, mirrors questions that surround Boeing efforts to meet surging Air Force demand for F-15EXs.

On top of all this, the Air Force’s still-evolving CCA plans remain something of a wildcard in these discussions. The Air Force has ordered General Atomics FQ-42 Vengeance and Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury CCAs into production, and is now aiming to have a combined fleet of at least 500 of these drones in inventory by 2032. The service is also still expecting to acquire additional CCAs, which could be of entirely different types, through a second iterative development cycle, or Increment 2, under this program. This is influencing the service’s crewed fighter force structure plans, but the full scale and scope of those impacts remain to be seen.

“CCA is very much a reality,” Tabor said yesterday, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It is going to be a part of our future, and there is absolutely a world in which the incorporation of CCAs into the force will mitigate the requirement for the number of fighters. That’s not the CCA that we have right now, but it is advancing very, very rapidly. We’re confident that it will play a major role in future versions of the fighter force structure report.”

The Air Force’s F-22s are currently set to be its first ‘aerial quarterbacks’ for CCAs, with F-35s and F-47s expected to follow. At the same time, TWZ has highlighted previously how CCA could offer particular value when paired with fourth-generation fighters like the F-16. This, in turn, could actually bolster the case for new Viper acquisitions as a more affordable force multiplier.

The Air Force’s ability to secure necessary funding and other factors will play in all this, too. 2035 is a long way off from a budgetary perspective. It also stretches across multiple election cycles, including the one that will decide the next presidential administration, all of which could lead to major changes in defense spending priorities. Congress can and routinely does demand that the U.S. military alter major procurement plans. Just in the past two years or so, legislators have intervened to force the Air Force to move ahead with the acquisition of new E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control planes and to save the U.S. Navy F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program.

In the meantime, the Air Force clearly faces many continued questions about how to balance the need to modernize its fighter fleets while ensuring it retains enough tactical airpower to meet current and future operational demands. Even so, the service says it sees no need to rush to make a decision about whether to choose the “lazy” route of just buying new F-16s.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Any Decision To Buy New-Build F-16s Not An “Urgent” Priority: USAF appeared first on TWZ.

One of the KC-10A Extender aerial refueling tankers the U.S. Air Force retired some two years ago has left the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. This aircraft is one of a set of KC-10As sold to private aerial refueling contractor Omega Air. At least one other potential operator, a still mysterious end user somewhere in North Africa, could also be in line to pick up several ex-Air Force Extenders.

Maxim Loshak, who goes by the handle @az_aviator on X and Instagram, caught the KC-10A leaving Davis-Monthan earlier today. The aircraft currently carries U.S. civil registration number N82247, and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records confirm that Omega Air is the new owner. Online flight tracking data also shows the aircraft subsequently flew to San Antonio International Airport, which is Omega’s main base of operations.

Omega's first KC-10A, N82247 (formerly 86-0034), has departed Davis-Monthan en route to San Antonio International Airport. pic.twitter.com/kALlgeuLGy

— KIWA Spotter (@KiwaSpotter) October 20, 2026

The KC-10A in question previously carried the Air Force registration number 86-0034 and had been in the boneyard since May 12, 2023, per the service’s records. The Air Force acquired a total of 60 Extender tankers between 1979 and 1987, and lost one in an accident in 1987. The very last of the remaining 59 KC-10As was retired in September 2024. The Extender was derived from the three-engine DC-10 airliner and was designed to refuel aircraft using either the boom or the probe-and-drogue method.

As seen in the picture at the top of this story, N82247 notably lacks the KC-10A’s trademark boom under the rear fuselage. This is actually not entirely unexpected. The Air Force had put 10 Extenders up for auction last year in a non-flyable state. Each of the planes was missing a single engine, taken from under one of their wings, for reasons that are still not entirely clear. These particular aircraft were also among the first KC-10As to be retired, and their booms had been stripped to be used as spares for other examples that had remained in service until the type’s final retirement in 2024.

In addition to sourcing the requisite engines, “in order to make them flyable, the winning bidder will need to work with Boeing to obtain a fly-away kit to seal up the area where the boom systems was,” an Air Force spokesperson told us last year while the 10 KC-10As were still up for auction.

Omega Air could fit new booms to this KC-10A, as well as other ex-USAF Extenders it is in the process of acquiring. The company could also leave some of them configured as probe-and-drogue-only tankers. Omega already flies two ex-Dutch KDC-10 tankers, which are broadly similar to the KC-10, as well as another DC-10 converted into a probe-and-drogue-only tanker. The company has several Boeing 707-based tankers, as well.

There is a possibility that some of the KC-10As that Omega is acquiring could be operated in non-tanker roles. Carrying cargo was also a major role for Extender while in Air Force service. Still, this seems unlikely given that aerial refueling is Omega’s primary business. Some of the ex-Air Force Extenders might also be used as sources of spare parts. TWZ has reached out for more information about Omega’s overall plans for its new acquisitions.

Regardless, even in a boomless configuration, ex-USAF KC-10As will be a significant addition to Omega Air’s fleet. Demand for private aerial refueling services, in general, has been ramping up in the United States and elsewhere globally in recent years.

For the U.S. military, private contractors offer a valuable way to reduce demand for and strain on organic tanker fleets to meet non-combat-related aerial refueling needs. This, in turn, helps free up government-owned tankers for combat missions and other higher-priority taskings. Those tankers may also simply not need to fly as much with private companies helping to shift the burden. The ability of the Air Force’s existing tanker fleets, in particular, to meet even peacetime demands has been a growing point of concern for years now. This has been further exacerbated by persistent technical and other issues with replacement KC-46 tankers.

With all this in mind, the Air Force’s decision to retire the KC-10A fleet entirely was and still is controversial. Though the Extenders were certainly aging, they were also highly flexible tankers able to carry greater loads of fuel than the KC-46s that supplanted them.

Omega Air clearly still sees value in the KC-10A. As mentioned, at least one other operator in North Africa is at least interested in potentially acquiring Extenders. Others may yet emerge.

If nothing else, after just over two years, an ex-USAF KC-10A has returned to the skies for a second career in the private sector.

Special thanks again to Maxim Loshak for sharing his picture of N82247 with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Retired KC-10 Extender Tanker Has Risen From Boneyard To Fly Again appeared first on TWZ.

A pilot flying an F-22 Raptor fighter has issued commands to a YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone in a first-of-its-kind test. This is an important development for the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program, as its F-22s are set to be the first aerial ‘quarterbacks’ for these uncrewed aircraft once they enter operational service.

The Air Force and Anduril, Fury’s prime contractor, announced the “airborne tactical-control demonstration” today, but it occurred sometime earlier this month. An Anduril spokesperson confirmed directly to TWZ that this was a first for an F-22 and a pre-production YFQ-44A. Last month, the company disclosed tests involving Fury flying in formation with F-35 fighters, but stressed that the latter were not yet issuing commands to the former in mid-air. A Fury drone also launched an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) for the first time earlier this year.

The Air Force has orders in now for production of FQ-44As, as well as General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance drones, under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program. The service is still planning to acquire additional CCAs, which could be of entirely different types, through a follow-on Increment 2. The goal now is to have a fleet of at least 500 Increment 1 CCAs by 2032. The recent test is part of efforts to lay the groundwork for an initial tranche of CCAs to start entering operational service around the end of the decade.

“During the demonstration, an F-22 pilot served as an airborne ‘quarterback,’ issuing high-level tactical directives to a single YFQ-44A,” according to a press release from the Air Force. “The aircraft’s onboard autonomy software interpreted and executed those directives in real time, conducting dynamic flight maneuvers and simulated combat tasks.”

“The event brought together personnel from the 412th Test Wing, 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, 309th Software Engineering Group, Experimental Operations Unit, F-22 System Program Office and the CCA Software Autonomy and Teaming Branch,” according to the Air Force release.

The Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) mentioned here is based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and has been leading efforts to pave the way for future Air Force CCA operations.

The “Fury and an F-22 both took off [from] Edwards AFB [Air Force Base in California] and joined up midair,” according to a separate release from Anduril. “While in flight, the Raptor pilot sent an updated mission plan to Fury using a tactical data link, commanding Fury through operationally-relevant maneuvers from the cockpit of the crewed quarterback.”

Neither the Air Force nor Anduril provided further details on how the F-22 was configured for this test. Past Air Force budget documents have mentioned the need to integrate “tablets, cables, and associated materials” onto the Raptor for this purpose. A single Raptor is also expected to be able to manage multiple CCA drones simultaneously.

The Raptor’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, has certainly been working with the Air Force to develop the relevant control architectures and user interfaces for that fighter, as well as the F-35. In terms of in-cockpit user interfaces for controlling drones, known work to date has centered largely on the use of touchscreen tablet-like devices, but this is understood to just be a starting point. Though tablet-based interfaces are a workable option, questions and criticisms about increased workload, especially for pilots in single-seat fighters, have been raised in the past.

It is also worth noting here that General Atomics announced a similar demonstration involving a Raptor and an MQ-20 Avenger back in November 2025. General Atomics has been using the MQ-20 as a CCA surrogate in various types of testing. What the plan might be now to demonstrate the F-22’s ability to control an FQ-42A in flight is unclear. General Atomics has previously released a picture of a Vengeance drone flying in formation with, though not being directly controlled by, Air Force fighters.

In addition, Fury and Vengeance are set to make their debut in a large-scale exercise before the end of the year. Bringing the CCAs to the next iteration of Exercise Emerald Flag will give the Air Force further opportunity to test them in a more operationally relevant context alongside crewed fighters.

“We have not yet done a LFE [large-force employment exercise] with these [CCAs], for real. The first one is going to be Emerald Flag. That’s in December,” Lt. Col. Lyndon “OTTO” Bartlett, the EOU’s Director of Operations, said during a panel at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September, at which TWZ was in attendance. “That’ll be our first tip [sic] dip of the toe in an actual force integration.”

The EOU, working together with other Air Force elements and industry partners, still has to answer a host of other outstanding questions unrelated to tactical operations. CCAs will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated in ways that are distinct from their crewed counterparts, and for which new policies and procedures will need to be developed. Just making sure human pilots have trust in their uncrewed wingmen operating as expected will be critical, underscoring the specific importance of the demonstration disclosed today. All of this applies equally to the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy CCA programs, which are being run in very close coordination with the Air Force’s efforts.

When it comes to the recent test involving the F-22 and the YFQ-44A, “this achievement demonstrates what is possible when we are aligned with industry on a shared imperative: delivering capability to the warfighter at unprecedented speed,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in a statement today. “We are driving urgency into every part of acquisition from rapid integration and flight learning to disciplined assessment, so we can turn promising technology into combat capability at the pace the threat demands.”

“This flight shows the power of crewed-uncrewed teaming and the advantage it provides our warfighters,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach also said. “We must test often, learn fast, and give commanders what they need, when they need it.”

“The U.S. Air Force’s CCA program is the fastest moving, most mature CCA program anywhere in the world, and will be the first to field operational aircraft,” Mark Shushnar, Anduril’s Vice President of Autonomous Airpower, said as well. “Getting there demands that Anduril and the U.S. Air Force work together to prove out the capability, define the operational procedures, and build trust between operators and their semi-autonomous wingmen.”

With all this in mind, an F-22 issuing orders to a YFQ-44A in mid-air is an important new sign of what is on the horizon for the U.S. Air Force, though there is still work to be done.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post F-22 Pilot Controls FQ-44 Fighter Drone From The Cockpit For The First Time appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Navy is preparing to sign a contract with Lockheed Martin to integrate the stealthy AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) onto the Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress bombers, according to an October 7 government notice. The effort would add another long-range maritime strike option to the U.S. bomber force as the military looks to counter increasingly capable adversary naval forces, especially in the Indo-Pacific theater.

The planned contract comes months after the Air Force revealed that the stealthy B-2 bomber can also launch LRASM, a capability that had not previously been publicly disclosed. You can read more about that here.

The latest Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) notice says the command intends to enter into sole-source negotiations with Lockheed Martin and subsequently award a cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order covering LRASM integration on the B-52. The work would include missile software updates, associated testing, repairs to test assets, and failure review boards.

The notice does not provide a schedule for completing the integration or fielding the capability.

The B-52 is already capable of carrying large numbers of air-launched cruise missiles, including the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family. LRASM is derived from that family, sharing a similar general form factor while incorporating features specifically designed to find and attack ships in contested maritime environments.

The B-52 can carry up to 20 JASSMs, and the weapons have the same dimensions, but the government notice does not specify how many LRASMs the bomber would ultimately carry.

This is not the first time the B-52’s LRASM integration has been in the works.

As long ago as November 2019, Naval News reported that $10 million in Fiscal Year 2019 funding had been allocated to study integrating the missile onto the bomber, with Lockheed Martin and the Navy and Air Force expected to work on the effort. At the time, officials said the fielding timeline and the bomber’s eventual missile capacity had yet to be determined.

The U.S. Air Force’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget proposal further outlines plans to integrate the latest variants of LRASM and JASSM onto the B-52, including versions not yet cleared for use on the bomber. According to the document, the effort, which is intended to enable the deployment of next-generation stealthy cruise missiles against targets protected by sophisticated integrated air defense systems, will focus on engineering and manufacturing development, software updates, and weapons integration. Planned work in FY2027 includes incorporating the missiles’ operational flight programs into the B-52’s baseline bomber software, validating safe weapon separation from both wing-mounted stations and the internal carriage launcher, updating armament interfaces, and completing system-safety testing.

LRASM is designed to attack high-value surface vessels at long distances while reducing the exposure of the aircraft launching it. Its guidance combines GPS-assisted inertial navigation with onboard sensors and autonomous target-recognition capabilities intended to help it operate in heavily defended environments. Its imaging infrared seeker supports terminal target acquisition without relying on active radar emissions in that phase of flight. The missile operates with a high degree of autonomy, enabled by an integrated route-planning capability linked to its onboard electronic support measures (ESM) system. LRASM also has a datalink that allows it to get threat updates while in flight. It can also work cooperatively with other LRASMs during coordinated strikes. 

The missile’s precise operational range is not publicly disclosed. However, the baseline LRASM is reported to be able to strike targets at between 200 and 300 miles, in line with the AGM-158A JASSM. The forthcoming C-3 version is expected to have the same reach as the JASSM-ER, which is reported to be around 600 miles.

For the B-52, the addition of LRASM would provide a dedicated anti-ship weapon alongside its established land-attack arsenal. A bomber operating at a considerable distance from a hostile fleet could launch multiple missiles toward maritime targets, complicating an adversary’s air-defense and interception problem. The aircraft’s payload capacity could also allow it to contribute substantial missile volume to a coordinated strike.

The B-52 was previously adapted to carry AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, although the weapon is not listed among the bomber’s current publicly documented armament. Compared to the Harpoon, however, LRASM represents a quantum leap in capability, offering drastically greater range, a stealthy design, and the ability to react to threats and adapt in real time. Combined, these traits make for a far more survivable and lethal anti-ship capability.

The B-52 also has a demonstrated naval mine-laying capability through the Quickstrike family of aerial mines. This includes carrying 2,000-pound Quickstrike-ER mines fitted with GPS-aided, winged guidance kits, allowing them to glide to designated points in the water from more than 40 miles away. The system enables the bomber to seed minefields with greater precision while remaining farther from potentially defended waters, threatening enemy shipping routes, port access, and naval movements.

The B-52 effort comes against the backdrop of the Air Force’s newly acknowledged use of LRASM on the B-2, which adds a different dimension to the service’s anti-ship capabilities.

LRASM was also previously integrated on the B-1B, meaning that all three of the Air Force’s strategic bombers will eventually be able to employ it.

The renewed focus on bomber-launched anti-ship weapons reflects the challenges posed by modern naval forces, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. China’s expanding surface fleet, increasingly sophisticated air defenses, and layered anti-access/area-denial capabilities have made the ability to attack ships from a distance an important consideration for U.S. military planning.

LRASM is designed to help address those challenges by combining long-range flight with reduced observability and autonomous terminal targeting. Its onboard sensors and navigation capabilities are intended to help it identify and engage appropriate targets in environments where communications and external targeting support may be limited or contested.

Bomber integration also offers a way to increase the number of potential launch platforms without relying exclusively on tactical aircraft or surface combatants. A B-52 carrying a substantial missile load could contribute to a coordinated attack alongside B-1s, stealth bombers, naval aircraft, and other forces.

The B-52’s payload capacity would make it particularly useful for delivering larger quantities of weapons from outside the most heavily defended areas.

The planned B-52 integration also fits into a broader effort to expand LRASM’s availability across the U.S. military. Publicly discussed integration efforts have included the F-15E, F-15EX, F-16C/D, certain variants of the F-35, and the Navy’s P-8A Poseidon, in addition to established launch platforms, namely the Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and the B-1.

Meanwhile, the B-52 fleet is currently preparing for a slew of major upgrades. These include a critical radar overhaul alongside new engines, enhanced communications systems, and other improvements. The scope of these changes is significant enough that the aircraft will be redesignated from B-52H to B-52J. The bombers are also slated to further expand their weapons capabilities, including through the addition of the Long-Range Stand Off (LRSO) nuclear cruise missile. The upgraded B-52Js are expected to remain in service through at least 2050.

Even in its current configuration, the B-52 is particularly well suited to carrying the LRASM, given its substantial payload capacity and ability to launch weapons from standoff distances beyond the reach of enemy air defenses. Its upgraded networking capabilities will greatly enhance its effectiveness by allowing it to operate as part of a broader kill web, drawing on data from multiple platforms and sensors to support targeting over vast distances. In more dynamic operational environments, the bomber’s new radar can generate its own targeting information in real time. The B-2, B-1, and the B-52 all offer distinct levels of penetration and weapons-delivery capability, with the forthcoming B-21 able to push deeper into contested airspace; it will certainly employ LRASM too.

The integration of LRASM onto the B-52 could prove critical to generating the volume of sorties needed to counter China’s expanding naval fleet. With its substantial payload capacity and ability to launch missiles from standoff distances, the B-52 could deliver significant anti-ship firepower across the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific. These missions would likely involve very long-range sorties, making the bomber’s payload capacity, endurance and networking capabilities particularly valuable in sustaining operations against Chinese naval forces.

If the LRASM integration proceeds as planned, the result would be another addition to the U.S. military’s long-range anti-ship arsenal, giving the Air Force’s venerable B-52 a more explicit role in the growing emphasis on striking hostile fleets at a distance.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post B-52 To Get Stealthy AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force’s scramjet-powered Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) has finally reached the flight test phase, with at least one “release” having been carried out so far over a range in Australia. HACM has suffered significant delays, and the Air Force has taken the risky step of scaling back overall testing plans to try to keep the program on schedule. The stated goal is to be able to make a decision to start rapidly acquiring HACMs in 2027.

The Air Force has been working on HACM in cooperation with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The program has been conducted, in part, under the broader umbrella of the U.S.-Australian Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) project also fed into HACM. Raytheon (now formally RTX), in cooperation with Northrop Grumman, was chosen to develop the missile in 2022. The weapon has reportedly been designated AHM-4A in a new branch of the U.S. military’s joint service nomenclature system for aircraft and missiles.

“The U.S. Air Force, in partnership with Australia, has conducted a flight test of the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) as part of our continuous work to advance long-range strike capabilities,” an Air Force spokesperson confirmed to TWZ today. “This effort is part of the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE), a collaborative agreement built on more than 15 years of partnership between our two nations.”

“Leveraging this enduring alliance, the Royal Australian Air Force executed the release of a HACM flight test unit over a designated Australian test range, gathering crucial data to advance the program’s objectives,” the spokesperson added. “The flight was the culmination of an extensive series of tests designed to measure the missile’s performance under realistic flight conditions.”

The spokesperson did not name the test range where the “release” was conducted or say when that occurred. Whether the missile flew under its own power for any amount of time after release is unknown. What aircraft was used to carry the missile aloft is also not known. TWZ has reached out for more information.

The Air Force did say previously that it planned to conduct HACM launches in Australia. The expectation has long been that this would be done at the country’s sprawling Woomera Test Range, which provides an ideal location for extended-range flight testing activities in general. The U.S. and Australia have partnered on other hypersonic testing at Woomera in the past, as seen in the video below. The remote inland location of the range complex makes it well suited for conducting more sensitive tests away from prying eyes, as well.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, has also reported in the past that RAAF F/A-18F Super Hornets would be used to conduct at least some of the HACM test launches. This would fit with today’s statement from the U.S. Air Force saying that it was the RAAF that “executed the release.” The Air Force’s initial launch platform is the F-15E Strike Eagle, though others are expected to follow.

To date, neither the Air Force nor Raytheon has released a confirmed picture or rendering of HACM. In 2023, the Air Force did release a picture, seen below, showing an air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile test article related to either HACM or the preceding HAWC effort.

“The missile consists of two stages, a rocket booster and a scramjet cruiser, which separates from the booster and eventually dives toward its target,” according to GAO. Scramjets do not function effectively at lower speeds, and designs powered by them require some form of initial boost to a high Mach velocity. Hypersonic speed is generally defined as anything above Mach 5, but what HACM’s peak speed might be is unknown.

Two-stage air-breathing missile-like hypersonic vehicle designs have been tested on several occasions in the past. This includes Boeing’s scramjet-powered X-51 Waverider and HyFly 2 hypersonic test vehicles, among others. The X-51 (as its name indicates) and HyFly 2 also notably had so-called ‘waverider’ configurations designed to ‘skip’ on the shockwaves generated during high-speed flight to help provide additional lift. Whether HACM might also use this principle is not known.

It’s also worth noting here that Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile also has a two-stage configuration. It remains unconfirmed whether or not the second stage of that weapon is powered, but it does not appear to be an air-breathing design either way. Castelion is currently developing an air-launched version of Blackbeard for the U.S. Navy, which is also in flight testing now, as well as a ground-launched type for the U.S. Army. You can read more about that missile here.

Coming soon to a theater near you…BLACKBEARD!@USPACOM @CENTCOM @PAEAviation pic.twitter.com/KgBtIqdf8I

— NAVAIR (@NAVAIRNews) September 25, 2026

Scramjet-powered air vehicle designs, including aircraft and missiles, have historically proven challenging. As noted, HACM has suffered delays over the years. The original goal had been to begin flight testing in 2024, which slipped first to 2025 and then 2026.

“The HACM program is on track to conduct its first flight test in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, but officials said there is effectively zero margin left in the schedule for the rapid prototyping effort. The program has already descoped the rapid prototyping effort from seven to five planned flight tests,” GAO said bluntly in a report published in July. “The Air Force plans to produce 13 missiles during the rapid prototyping effort, including test assets, test spares, and operational rounds.”

“If a significant flight test failure occurs, it is likely that the program will not be able to complete all five tests within the 5-year rapid prototyping timeframe,” the report continued. “According to the program, completing at least the first three flight tests is critical for informing the Air Force’s decision to initiate a rapid fielding effort and procure HACM in fiscal year 2027.”

GAO’s July report, which had a January cutoff date, noted later on that the Air Force’s target date for initiating the rapid fielding effort, more specifically, was the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2027. This fiscal period began last Thursday and runs through the end of the year. Whether the service is still aiming to keep to that part of the schedule is unclear, but it would seem extremely difficult to do so.

“The HACM program has taken on risk to maintain its current schedule. According to program officials, maintaining the schedule has required aggressively resequencing activities to focus almost exclusively on those necessary to support the first flight test date,” GAO’s report added. “In some cases, officials said this has involved risky strategies, such as concurrently performing parts validation testing while completing the system’s design, which could require the redesign of key parts if they fail validation testing.”

In terms of U.S. hypersonic missile developments, challenges have also not been limited to scramjet-powered types like HACM. Air Force, Navy, and Army efforts to develop a variety of air- and surface-launched hypersonic missiles in various sizes and configurations have all suffered setbacks in the past decade or so. The Navy notably cancelled its own air-launched hypersonic cruise missile program, called Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare, or HALO, last year. The service subsequently shifted focus to the aforementioned Blackbeard under a program called the Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector (MACE). This has all prompted particular concerns about a growing and increasingly worrisome gap in this regard between the United States and its chief global competitors, especially China.

There is also a cost question. HACM traces to a time when hypersonic missiles were generally viewed, at least publicly, as highly capable, but also higher-cost and lower-density, assets. Blackbeard, for example, reflects a more recent push to develop and field more economical munition designs across the board that can also be more readily produced at scale. This demand signal has become even more pronounced in light of the dwindling American stockpiles of critical munitions due to the conflict with Iran, as well as other crises globally in recent years. More exquisite munitions, including hypersonic types, will still be part of the larger U.S. arsenal going forward.

Regardless, the U.S. military, as well as its Australian counterparts, have made it clear in the past that they view hypersonic weapons as critical for success in future conflicts, especially high-end fights, such as one in the Pacific against China. In general, air-breathing hypersonic cruise missiles offer a valuable and highly flexible way to strike targets, especially time-sensitive ones, quickly and over extended ranges. The weapon’s high speed and maneuverability drastically increase its ability to penetrate through enemy air defenses and reduce the total time an opponent has to react.

Whether or not the Air Force will be able to avoid any more major delays with HACM remains to be seen. The service’s goal to start at least limited production of HACM before the end of 2027, if not sooner, is even more ambitious now after years of schedule slips. As mentioned, officials have already acknowledged there was no more margin for error at the start of the year. There are many questions still about what form any initial fielding will take, and how that might be further impacted by the truncated testing plan.

The HACM program has at least now hit the important milestone of beginning flight testing.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post First Release Of USAF’s New HACM Hypersonic Cruise Missile Has Happened Over Australian Range appeared first on TWZ.

U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers that had been deployed to RAF Fairford in the U.K. since operation Epic Fury have returned to their home stations, a U.S. defense official confirmed to TWZ. The hasty movement was reportedly sparked by new Iranian threats against the base, although the Pentagon doesn’t confirm that assertion.

The sudden withdrawal came a week after a major incident was declared near Fairford following the arrest of five men on suspicion of driving bomb-laden vans toward it. They were later released on bail after no explosives were found. However, Counter-Terrorism police are continuing the investigation and said they were considering ​whether a foreign ​state had ⁠been involved. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the incident might have had an Iranian ​link.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the departure.

Bomber strikes launched from Fairford, which included ones executed by both B-1s and B-52s, were a central aspect of major U.S. combat operations against Iran earlier this year. In addition, the installation is a major hub for U.S. military aircraft in the United Kingdom. It is a regular host of strategic assets, including bombers and U-2 spy planes. It also acts as a pit stop for other aircraft, including fighters, that are being ferried to and from the United States.

The U.S. withdrew all 12 B-1s “after commanders received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the installation,” The New York Times reported, citing two U.S. officials.

“The withdrawal was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone,” the publication added. “The need to move the bombers out of the base, R.A.F. Fairford, was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support their flights to the United States. At least three of the planes had landed at their home base in South Dakota by Sunday.”

U.S. officials declined to tell the Times the specific nature of the new information that prompted the Lancer withdrawal, some of which had just arrived in the past week as part of a normal rotation of forces to maintain the B-1 forward presence in Europe.

“One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, but specific details and a sense of urgency spiked in the past 24 hours, alarming commanders,” the publication noted.

As we previously reported, Tehran directly threatened RAF Fairford in July over its use as a base to launch attacks against Iran.

“The American aggressor army, which used to launch cruise missiles from its vessels in the Indian Ocean in its aggression after the official resumption of the war, with the end of the missile reserves of the aforementioned vessels, yesterday switched to using B1 planes flying from Fairford Air Base, England,” Tasnim News Agency, a quasi-state outlet in Iran with ties to the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed on Telegram on July 23. “As the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stated, any base that is used to invade Iran’s territory is our legitimate goal.”

the enemy must pay the price for its breach of promises, and this time we will not allow America to use deceptive ceasefires to replenish its oil and ammunition stockpiles and then resume attacks once again.

— Press TV (@PressTV) July 23, 2026

Local aircraft spotters and aviation photographers began to notice the aircraft departing in large numbers earlier on Sunday.

The aircraft left in several waves, according to the DefenceGeek X account, run by the senior editor of the U.K. Defence Journal.

IN FULL: US Bomber Force Withdrawal from RAF Fairford #IranWar‌

OK so now we know the full scale of this withdrawal, here's the details – 10 of the 12 B-1B "Lancer" bombers remaining at the base (including the aircraft that only arrived 6 days ago on a rotation) are heading… pic.twitter.com/LSBHuomAcz

— DefenceGeek (@DefenceGeek) October 4, 2026

B-1 MAYAN42 departing for home just now it was with MAYAN41 86-0111 which only recently arrived at RAF Fairford suggesting not a rotation. That's 10 today now. pic.twitter.com/sfvDjmgdgK

— Saint1 (@Saint1Mil) October 4, 2026

The defense official who confirmed the withdrawal said the aircraft movements won’t affect overall readiness.

“The Airmen that operate America’s bomber force, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, remain ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities – including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States – anywhere, anytime,” the official added.

When we asked the Pentagon about the retrograde movement of bombers from the U.K., they did not confirm the security issue that prompted it, stating:

“U.S. Air Force bombers routinely operate around the world to support global force readiness and operational requirements. While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States. The Airmen that operate America’s bomber force, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, remain ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities – including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States – anywhere, anytime.”

Regardless, this is the first time in months that RAF Fairford has not hosted U.S. bombers.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post B-1B Bombers Make Hasty Departure From England appeared first on TWZ.

Seven companies are said to now be in the running to develop a lower-cost and highly modular drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. Though the field has some well-established entrants and some far lesser known names, the inclusion of Otto Aerospace in this group is particularly unexpected and interesting to examine. Otto has made bold, but still unrealized pronouncements about disrupting the aviation industry with potentially revolutionary high-efficiency designs that could have civilian and military applications. TWZ has been steadily tracking the company’s developments since we first reported on the existence of the Celera 500L aircraft back in 2017.

Air & Space Forces Magazine first reported on Wednesday that Otto Aerospace (previously Otto Aviation), as well as Anduril, Chaos Industries, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Grid Aero, Shield AI, and Swarm Aero, had “made the cut” for the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) program, citing anonymous sources. The MMA effort formally kicked off in July, and the Air Force is now aiming to have a fleet of at least 500 of these drones by 2032.

An industry source has also told us that these seven companies are moving ahead in the MMA program. The Air Force has not yet offered an official confirmation.

“The Air Force’s partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit is accelerating requirements development and rapid prototyping by leveraging commercial innovation and reducing timelines,” a spokesperson for the service said when we asked for more information. “We continue working with industry to inform requirements and assess potential solutions as we shape the future MMA capability.”

TWZ has also reached out to all of the companies on the list for more details.

As mentioned, it is unexpected and especially interesting to see Otto named here in the context of MMA. The company’s core design philosophy centers around what is called laminar flow. Broadly speaking, this refers to liquid or gaseous “fluids,” including air, flowing in smooth, regular layers across a surface with little to no mixing between them. In aviation, optimization for laminar flow translates to reduced drag and improved aerodynamic efficiency. This, in turn, can offer a host of benefits, including when it comes to fuel economy, extended range, and overall performance, as well as reductions in operating costs.

With this in mind, all of the designs that Otto has shown to date, starting with the Celera 500L, have been based around teardrop-shaped fuselages to maximize laminar flow benefits. Many of them also feature long, slender glider-like wings. The sudden and unannounced appearance of the very exotic and futuristic-looking Celera 500L at the Southern California Logistics Airport in 2017, at which time nothing was known about the aircraft or its manufacturer, caused a stir in the broader aviation community. TWZ was the first to report on the plane and then unmasked its identity.

On top of the laminar flow-optimized shaping, the Celera 500L was a pusher-propeller design powered by a single high-efficiency, turbocharged, multi-fuel V12 piston engine. A relevant patent held by Otto also describes a novel exhaust system with a heat exchanger that provides an additional boost in thrust.

Otto conducted an extensive test campaign with the Celera 500L, taking the aircraft up to an altitude of 15,000 feet and to a speed of 250 miles per hour. The company posited that this would translate to a cruising speed of around 460 miles per hour at the design’s intended operating ceiling of 50,000 feet.

Development focus at the company has since shifted to the jet-powered Phantom 3500, which has a much revised design compared to the Celera 500L. Otto has said previously that it expects this aircraft to burn just 115 gallons of fuel per hour, further underscoring the benefits of its laminar-flow-centric approach. Comparably sized business jets like the Bombardier Challenger 350, Cessna Citation Latitude, and Embraer Praetor 500 consume around 300 gallons per hour, according to the company, citing data from Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI).

It is also worth noting here that Otto has already developed a drone with a “highly laminar-flow efficient airframe” for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company announced the successful completion of a flight test campaign in May. The pusher-propeller design has a teardrop-shaped main body, a glider-type main wing, and a T-tail at the end of a boom that extends to the rear of the aircraft. DARPA plans to use that drone to demonstrate laser-based power beaming technology that could be used to relay electricity to forward operating locations. The technology could also dramatically extend the endurance of an electrically-powered drone, potentially allowing it to stay in the air indefinitely.

The drone for DARPA is far too small to meet the Air Force’s MMA requirements. However, “the program leveraged Otto’s aerodynamic expertise to design and flight-test an unmanned vehicle that could inform design parameters for future energy-relay systems or more extremely fuel-efficient, long-endurance platforms,” per a press release Otto put out in May.

TWZ has highlighted in the past how the general range, fuel economy, and other advantages inherent to Otto’s designs could be even more pronounced in a configuration that does not need to support a human crew. Furthermore, Otto has previously shown militarized concepts, crewed and uncrewed. As we’ve written in our earlier coverage of the Celera 500L:

“Though primarily aimed at civilian and commercial operators, Otto’s new website also highlights the potential for the Celera 500L to use its long-range and high fuel economy to support military missions, including transporting personnel and cargo, as well as conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. A version of the aircraft, possibly unmanned, equipped with any number of sensor suites could be an impressive persistent surveillance and communications relay platform able to orbit over particular areas for very long periods of time and cover a wide swath of the battlefield from its high perch. It could also be able to reposition itself quickly and transit to its tasking area at jet-like speeds.”

While we have yet to see an explicit MMA proposal from Otto, a laminar flow-optimized drone could be a very attractive offering, given the program’s focus on reducing costs while having an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles, among other capabilities. A more efficient design could further translate to a drone that needs less fuel to meet range and other requirements, which, in turn, could allow for a smaller and/or cheaper design overall. Weight and physical space savings afforded by reduced fuel demand could be used to increase ordnance and other payload capacity, too. You can read more about what is known about the MMA requirements here.

There are more companies beyond Otto in the running. With the Air Force aiming to buy hundreds of MMA drones in the coming years, there will be stiff competition.

General Atomics, which developed and produced the MQ-9A, has publicly put forward its own proposal for a successor, called Wildfire. The new drone draws heavily on experience with the Reaper, as well as other drones in the company’s portfolio, and you can read more about what is known about that design here. General Atomics declined to offer additional comment in response to questions regarding the current state of the MMA program. As an aside, General Atomics is also now on contract to build higher-end FQ-42 Vengeance drones for the Air Force, one of two designs intended for higher-end air combat the service is acquiring under its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program.

The other company building CCA drones for the Air Force is Anduril, with its FQ-44 Fury, and it has now also been named in relation to the MMA effort. Anduril has unveiled two other very different tactical drones since 2025, the twin-engine hybrid-electric tail-sitting Omen, designed primarily for surveillance and reconnaissance, and Thunder, an armed tiltrotor pitched as an uncrewed companion for crewed rotorcraft. Neither of those uncrewed aircraft would seem to directly align with the stated MMA requirements, but might serve as a starting place. Anduril also has a history now of developing new uncrewed platforms and other systems discreetly, and sharing them with the public only when they have become relatively mature.

What design Shield AI might be offering is unknown. The MMA requirements would seem to sit between the company’s V-BAT drone, which is in service with several armed forces today, including in the United States and Ukraine, and the much higher-end X-BAT that is now in development. Shield AI has been working to expand on the V-BAT design, including plans to integrate air-launched munitions. Both V-BAT and X-BAT are also vertical-takeoff and landing designs. Beyond drones, Shield AI remains a major developer of artificial intelligence-driven autonomy packages for the U.S. military and others.

Earlier this month, newcomer Swarm Aero unveiled a new drone with performance and capabilities that align with the stated MMA requirements earlier this month. Called Gamera, the design has a single propeller at the front of a small central fuselage, together with sponsons holding large fuel cells on either side and a twin-boom tail configuration broadly reminiscent of the OV-10 Bronco light attack aircraft, as TWZ previously reported on in more detail.

Grid Aero is publicly developing a twin-engine cargo drone called the Lifter Lite, in part with funding from AFWERX, the Air Force’s internal technology incubator. Whether the company might work to adapt the Lifter Lite, which has been undergoing testing at least on the ground, to meet the MMA requirements or has proposed something entirely different is not known.

The last firm on the list, Chaos Industries, does not appear to show any drone designs on its website at the time of writing. It is primarily known as a developer of radar systems, especially for use in counter-drone systems. The company declined to comment in response to TWZ queries regarding the MMA program.

To reiterate, the Air Force still has not confirmed the full list of MMA program contenders. Otto’s participation would be a standout, but the field as it is understood now features a number of very established drone makers, as well as emerging start-ups, all vying for a very lucrative opportunity. On top of the potential just to supply hundreds of drones upfront, those uncrewed aircraft look set to be a key part of the Air Force’s force structure for years to come, and will need to be supported throughout their lifecycles. The MMA requirements put heavy emphasis on modularity and open-architecture systems to allow for the rapid integration of new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line.

The Air Force has also previously raised the possibility of selecting multiple vendors to produce designs under the MMA program, or to pursue follow-on rounds of competition to help meet its operations requirements. This is exactly how the service has been running the CCA program, and has already led to the aforementioned production contracts with General Atomics and Anduril. In addition, the Air Force is targeting a base $10 million unit cost for each MMA drone, a price point that would help make losses more tolerable, and could open the door to acquiring a fleet of far more than 500 examples.

It is also important to remember that the Air Force has tried and failed on several occasions to develop and field an MQ-9A replacement. As TWZ has previously explored in great detail, the service’s view of what that drone should be has also evolved over time, with the current MMA program squarely focused on a more affordable option that does not put a heavy premium on survivability. The Air Force has acknowledged potential budget and other hurdles to its new effort. At the same time, heavy continued operational demand for Reapers, coupled with dozens of losses in the course of the war with Iran, as well as other operations in and around the Middle East in recent years, have put major new emphasis on finally finding a successor.

Overall, beyond what is already known about potential MMA offerings, it will be very interesting to see what Otto and the other contenders put forward to finally succeed the iconic Reaper.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Hunt For MQ-9 Reaper Successor Surprisingly Includes Exotic Aircraft Manufacturer Otto Aerospace appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force is looking at adding a missile warning system (MWS) to its new F-15EX Eagle II fighters. This will give the aircraft a way to optically detect incoming missile threats, especially passively guided ones like heat-seeking infrared-guided missiles, which they currently lack. The continued absence of an MWS has become more pronounced in light of recent combat experiences over Iran.

The F-15EX is derived from earlier F-15 variants that all have MWSs, and it had seemed logical to expect the Eagle II would feature this capability. So it was puzzling when the first examples rolled out without such a system, and no apparent plans to install one on a jet already costing upwards of $100 million. The omission has been glaring for years now, especially given that the aircraft has all the provisions for such a system, including blanked-over spots for the sensors.

The Air Force has 22 Eagle IIs in inventory now and currently plans to acquire a total fleet of 267 of the jets. The aircraft’s manufacturer, Boeing, is on contract now to build 120 F-15EXs, including a lot of 22 jets through a new $2.38 billion deal also announced yesterday.

Now, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC) Fighters & Advanced Aircraft Directorate “is seeking sources for the procurement of an operationally qualified threat missile launch and approach warning system for rapid integration into the United States Air Force (USAF) F-15EX Eagle II fighter aircraft,” per a contracting notice put out yesterday. “The MWS must alert the F-15EX aircrew to the presence of missiles that may threaten the aircraft without unreasonably distracting the aircrew with false alarms.”

As mentioned, the F-15EX is already configured to accommodate an MWS, inside and out, something AFLCMC’s notice emphasizes. This is a result of the Eagle II having been directly derived from the F-15QA variant for Qatar, which itself was an outgrowth of the F-15SA for Saudi Arabia. While many of the F-15EX’s advances come from these aircraft, the first F-15 variant to get an MWS was actually Singapore’s F-15SG. The Advanced Eagle line and the F-15SG are part of Boeing’s extended F-15E Strike Eagle family.

“The MWS must use the six (6) pre-existing F-15EX sensor locations, data cables, power cables, and cooling,” the contracting notice says. “It must be easily, safely, rapidly, and organically installable and removable in the field by USAF military aircraft maintenance personnel without requiring any change to aircraft configuration beyond installation of MWS line replaceable units (LRUs) in the six (6) pre-existing locations in the aircraft dedicated for missile warning.”

The most visually prominent of those pre-existing sensor locations are two horn-like sponsons, one on each side of the forward fuselage right below the cockpit canopy. There are two more locations at the ends of the jet’s tail booms. The last two locations are situated so additional sensors can face straight up and down to provide total 360-degree coverage.

The sources sought notice does not mention any specific MWS and invites prospective vendors to submit proposals. It also stresses that the Air Force is still in the “market research” phase of the contracting process and that it “does not constitute [a] solicitation and shall not be construed as a commitment” to buy such a system.

The F-15SA uses the AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning System (CMWS), and this system is understood to also be found on the F-15QA. Beyond F-15 variants, versions of the AN/AAR-57, for which BAE Systems is currently the prime contractor, are fielded today on a wide variety of other fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, including various types in U.S. military service. CMWS variants are notably found across the U.S. Army’s AH-64, UH-60, and CH-47 helicopter fleets.

All versions of the CMWS consist of several electro-optic missile sensors (EOMS), the number of which varies from platform to platform, linked to a central electronic control unit (ECU). The system is also designed to be integrated into larger defensive suites.

While the AN/AAR-57 is a proven system with years of successful integration on the F-15 and other platforms, it is just one option of the open market today. The Air Force could choose to take another route, possibly with a new system that offers added functionality.

The addition of any MWS will give the F-15EX a valuable, if not increasingly critical, boost in defensive capability. The Eagle II does already have an extremely powerful self-protection suite, including the Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS). However, it is heavily geared toward defending against radar-based threats that pump out signals that can be detected and jammed. Infrared-homing anti-air missiles zero in on their targets passively.

In general, MWSs also typically make use of passive infrared sensors to spot the heat plumes of missile launches and the thermal signatures of those threats as they continue their approach. BAE Systems says current-generation versions of the AN/AAR-57 are sensitive enough to detect infantry anti-armor rockets being launched, as well as small arms fire from the ground, under the right circumstances. Though an MWS is not an active countermeasure unto itself, the early warning it provides gives critical time to deploy flares or employ other defensive capabilities, or just take evasive action.

TWZ touched on all of this last month after The New York Times reported new details about the shootdown of an F-15E Strike Eagle over Iran in April. A shoulder-fired, heat-seeking surface-to-air missile, also known as a man-portable air defense system (MANPADS), is said to have been responsible, though this remains unconfirmed. The Strike Eagle also lacks an MWS. The Times‘ story said that the F-15E’s defensive suite provided the crew with only half a second of warning. As we noted at the time, it would actually have provided no warning given that the Strike Eagle also lacks an MWS.

Even before the current conflict with Iran broke out, TWZ had questioned the F-15EX’s lack of this capability given the general focus on increased survivability to match expanding threat ecosystems globally. EPAWSS is already a reflection of that reality, and could be made even more capable when tied together with an MWS. In May, we had reached out to the Air Force about any plans to integrate an MWS onto the F-15EX in light of observations from the ongoing conflict with Iran. The service told us then that it had no details to share. Whether the service now has any plans to add MWSs to the Strike Eagle fleet, which would require more significant integration work, is also unknown.

Buying F-15EX and not springing for the missile approach warning system is absolutely the dumbest thing. $100M fighter, but let's save a few bucks on a key defensive advantage. You are not always going to get a radar spike from a threat, even at altitude.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) April 4, 2026

They also didn't buy conformals for the first EXs. So silly.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) April 4, 2026

Infrared homing anti-air missiles, as well as air defense systems that use passive infrared sensors for target detection and cueing, are certainly not threats limited to Iran. In Yemen, Iranian-backed Houthi militants have been making good use of these capabilities for years now, something else we have explored in great detail in the past. The Houthis claimed to have downed a Saudi Arabian F-15 just earlier this month and, per a now-long standing modus operandi, subsequently released video captured through a ground-based forward-looking infrared (FLIR) system as evidence. The group also shared images of the wreckage of what looked to be an F-15SA Advanced Eagle, underscoring the dangers posed even to aircraft equipped MWSs.

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

These threats are not limited to the Middle East more broadly, either, and are only increasingly likely to be encountered in future conflicts globally. The emergence of ever-more capable and longer-range anti-air missiles with infrared or dual-mode guidance systems is a significant factor in all this. Expanding use of passive infrared search and track (IRST) systems on aircraft and infrared sensors on ground-based air defense systems are part of this larger equation, as well.

How the Air Force ultimately decided to proceed with the integration of an MWS onto the F-15EX fleet remains to be seen. However, the Eagle II’s lack of this capability is only becoming more striking, especially in light of the conflict with Iran.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post F-15EX May Finally Get Missile Warning System The USAF Originally Skimped On Buying appeared first on TWZ.

Details continue to come in, but police in the United Kingdom have declared a “major incident” and ordered evacuations near RAF Fairford after the arrest of “several men on suspicion of offenses under the explosives act,” the Gloucestershire Constabulary stated.

RAF Fairford is a major hub for U.S. military aircraft in the United Kingdom. It is a regular host of strategic assets, including bombers and U-2 spy planes. It also acts as a pit stop for other aircraft, including fighters, that are being ferried to and from the United States. Bomber strikes launched from Fairford were a central aspect of major U.S. combat operations against Iran earlier this year.

“A number of properties are currently being evacuated in the Whelford area following the declaration of a major incident,” the Gloucestershire Constabulary also announced today in light of the incident.

The evacuations were spurred by the arrests.

“The Army’s specialist explosive ordnance disposal team are currently examining a number of vehicles,” Gloucestershire Constabulary added. “The local residents are being evacuated to a nearby leisure center.”

“A cordon is currently in place, but we’d like to reassure people that we believe this incident is contained,” the law enforcement agency explained. “We are working closely with our partners and are enacting the well-rehearsed plans we have in place.”

The incident began around 12:45 AM local time Sunday “when police received a call relating to three suspicious vehicles traveling towards RAF Fairford,” according to Gloucestershire police Assistant Chief Constable Richard Ocone. “Armed officers responded and subsequently arrested five men in the Whelford area on suspicion of committing offenses under the Explosives Act. The men were taken into custody, where they remain.”

“A 400-meter cordon has been put in place around the vehicles while the army’s explosive ordnance disposal unit examined them,” Ocene continued. “As a precaution, around 85 households have been advised to evacuate while these examinations take place.”

BREAKING:

The British authorities issue a first official statement on the suspected terror plot against RAF Fairford

They sent in a local low-ranking policemen to deliver a statement saying 5 men have been arrested and that people shouldn’t speculate about the case.

He… pic.twitter.com/9dD8910Kpw

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 27, 2026

Video has emerged showing British military explosive ordnance disposal robots reportedly defusing the vans used by the suspects.

Video of British military EOD robots defusing suspected bomb vans near RAF Fairford courtesy of SkyNews. pic.twitter.com/PbrrVH6V1x

— WarMonitor (@WarMonitor3) September 27, 2026

“We are aware of the current reporting, for questions regarding off-base incidents please contact the local authorities,” a U.S. Air Force spokesperson told us in response to our questions about whether the incident had raised force protection levels at RAF Fairford or other installations in the area hosting American forces. Unconfirmed reports by the local aviation spotter community claimed RAF Fairford had been placed under what is called FPCON Delta, the highest level of alert at U.S. military installations.

The incident at RAF Fairford has been escalating overnight, this is what is clear so far.

Gloucestershire Police has announced that they have arrested multiple men on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act, and that they have declared a Major Incident.

According to the… https://t.co/vk5N7yUuzB pic.twitter.com/IMHGtKGiC1

— Armchair Admiral (@ArmchairAdml) September 27, 2026

“For operational security reasons we will not discuss specific force protection measures,” the Air Force spokesperson added. “The 501st Combat Support Wing and our fellow UK-based Wings remain vigilant and will take appropriate actions to ensure the safety and security of our U.S. service members, civilians, contractors, and their families. We constantly assess a variety of factors that determine what measures we institute or modify to protect our installations, our people and their families.”

It is unclear if airfield operations at RAF Fairford have been affected. U.S. Air Force officials did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

The British Defense Ministry did not immediately provide comment on this unfolding event.

RAF Fairford is a major hub for U.S. military aircraft, with strategic assets, like B-1B Lancer bombers, being forward deployed to the base and tactical and other assets often using it as a pit stop during flights ‘across the pond.’

As mentioned, RAF Fairford played a key role in major combat operations against Iran earlier this year. No connection has been established yet between today’s incident and any particular group, but the base has drawn direct threats from the regime in Tehran in the past.

“The American aggressor army, which used to launch cruise missiles from its vessels in the Indian Ocean in its aggression after the official resumption of the war, with the end of the missile reserves of the aforementioned vessels, yesterday switched to using B1 planes flying from Fairford Air Base, England,” Tasnim News Agency, a quasi-state outlet in Iran with ties to the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed on Telegram on July 23. “As the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stated, any base that is used to invade Iran’s territory is our legitimate goal.”

the enemy must pay the price for its breach of promises, and this time we will not allow America to use deceptive ceasefires to replenish its oil and ammunition stockpiles and then resume attacks once again.

— Press TV (@PressTV) July 23, 2026

Considering its importance to U.S. military operations, the base is a major potential target for nefarious actors, in general. Like other bases across Europe, it is a major potential target for Russia’s ‘hybrid war’ or ‘gray zone’ activities, as well.

Asked about the threats at the time, a British official told us that the country was prepared to defend itself.

“Our Armed Forces are ready to keep the United Kingdom safe from any kind of attacks, whether it’s on our soil or from abroad,” a government official told TWZ. “The UK stands ready 24/7 to defend itself. This includes through operating a layered approach to air and missile defense, provided by Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force assets equipped with a range of advanced capabilities, working closely with our NATO allies.”

“In the Defense Investment Plan we have made air and missile defense a priority after years of underfunding, dedicating £790 million to enhance protection of the UK homeland and overseas bases from air, drone and missile threats,” the official added. “That is complemented by more than £2 billion of funding to deliver further air defense and counter-drone capabilities, and to upgrade and sustain our Typhoon fleet.”

This is a developing story.

UPDATE: 10:49 AM Eastern –

A Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) has been imposed over Whelford, Gloucestershire, following the incident. It applies to all aircraft, including “any small balloon, any kite, any UAS and any parachute, including a parascending parachute or paramotor,” according to the FAA. “Pilots are forbidden to fly within the designated area without permission.”

The TFR runs through Oct. 5.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post British Police Arrest Men Driving Toward U.S. Bomber Base In The U.K. With Suspected Explosives appeared first on TWZ.

The last A-10 Thunderbolt II assigned to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, left the installation on September 22. The departure marks the end of nearly five decades of Warthog operations, including tactics development and testing, at the Air Force’s most high-profile fighter base. It also reflects a broader shift in which close air support expertise and some associated missions are supposedly being distributed among the F-15, F-16, and F-35 communities, although the move is controversial, to say the least.

Nearly 70 airmen assigned to Nellis gathered along the flight line to salute the aircraft as it departed. The final takeoff closes a chapter that began in 1977, when the first A-10 arrived at the base, which subsequently became a major center for developing and refining the aircraft’s operational employment.

Over the decades, Nellis-based units worked on the A-10’s software, avionics, and precision weapons capabilities, while the U.S. Air Force Weapons School’s 66th Weapons Squadron trained more than 300 A-10 weapons officers through approximately 100 classes. Many of the tactics in the A-10’s playbook emanated from the base.

The A-10’s departure consequently represents more than the retirement of another aircraft from a Nellis ramp. It also marks the end of a dedicated training and institutional ecosystem that developed around an aircraft specifically designed for close air support.

Earlier this year, Jamie Hunter of TWZ visited the U.S. Air Force A-10 Weapons Instructor Course as it was in the process of closing down, as documented in these exclusive videos:

The Air Force is now attempting to carry at least some of that expertise into a force built around multirole fourth- and fifth-generation fighters.

“We are maintaining the culture of the A-10 by involving as many other fighter communities involved in the close air support mission,” Lt. Col. Ridge Flick, commander of the 66th Weapons Squadron, said. “We are also training F-15 Eagle, F-35 Lightning II and F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots to take on some roles we have had in combat search and rescue.”

The A-10 was developed specifically for close air support, with its design emphasizing survivability at relatively low altitude, weapons employment against ground targets, and the ability to persist in the vicinity of friendly forces. In contrast, the F-16C/D and F-15E/EX were developed primarily as multirole fighters, while the F-35 combines strike, air-to-air, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and networking capabilities with a low-observable design.

Rather than replacing the A-10 with a single successor, the Air Force is therefore distributing elements of its former mission set across several aircraft and communities. The service insists its close air-support capability is not being reduced as the Warthog fleet retires, but at the very least the transition does represent a significant change in how that capability is generated and employed.

Regardless, the USAF’s claim that the impact of losing the heart of the A-10’s braintrust will not dramatically impact key mission sets in a negative manner has been viewed with extreme skepticism by some. It’s not uncommon for subject matter experts to believe the close air support and ‘Sandy’ aircrew recovery mission braintrust that the Warthog community represents is a far bigger loss than the aircraft itself, and that the USAF is not prepared to preserve this critical expertise, regardless of the service’s stated intentions.

The end of A-10 operations at Nellis also put what may be the final nail in the A-10’s coffin, as reconstituting these operations would be very challenging and costly. All this points to the Warthog being on its final glide path to retirement, once and for all.

You can read all about this controversy in our past special feature linked here.

Beyond the redistribution of Nellis’s A-10 pilots, the transition is also affecting the maintainers who supported the base’s A-10 fleet. Airmen assigned to the 757th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron’s Thunder Aircraft Maintenance Unit are being reassigned to other squadrons and airframes, including the F-35 and F-16. The Air Force is consequently moving not only personnel, but also decades of experience maintaining an aging and structurally demanding aircraft into programs supporting newer fighters.

For Staff Sgt. Eva Kehn, a weapons load crew chief with the 757th AMXS, the end of the A-10 era has an especially personal dimension because of her family’s connection to the aircraft and to aviation.

“Working on the A-10 is meaningful to me because that is something that I share with my grandfather,” Kehn said. “I’m very excited to have that new chapter and bond over that again with my grandfather.”

Kehn is transferring to an F-35 unit at Nellis, where that connection will continue in a different form. Her grandfather is now a civilian F-35 instructor, giving the two an opportunity to remain professionally connected even as the A-10 disappears from the installation.

Master Sgt. Aaron Edmonds, an aircraft section chief with the 757th AMXS, is also moving on from the Warthog after spending the past five years maintaining the aircraft. Edmonds previously worked on the F-16 earlier in his career and will now return to the Viper community.

“It’s a bittersweet moment,” Edmonds said. “I enjoyed my time with the A-10, but I’m excited because this departure marks the closing of one chapter and the start of another.”

Edmonds said the experience gained on the A-10 should be carried into the next aircraft rather than left behind with the airframe. “The advice I would give airmen who are transitioning from one airframe to another is to be open-minded, willing to learn and carry on the great work ethic from your previous aircraft over to your new one,” he said.

With the A-10 no longer present at Nellis, at least some of the expertise attached to it is being incorporated into a fighter force in which other aircraft types can contribute to the close air support mission in very different ways. An F-35, for example, can use its sensors and networking capabilities to identify and share information about targets and the battlespace, and it can go where other fighters can’t. An F-15 can contribute heavier weapons and longer endurance, among other capabilities, depending on the mission. This is not exactly new, either, as all types of aircraft provided CAS during the Global War on Terror-era, although the masters of exactly how to do it and how to execute the critical airborne forward air control (FAC-A) mission existed in the A-10 community. Still, the resulting force will be considerably different from the one centered on the Warthog, even where the underlying requirement to support troops on the ground remains.

As noted, the A-10’s retirement now looks to be gathering pace, despite repeated efforts to keep the A-10 in service and recent employment in combat operations in the Middle East. The Pentagon has granted three Warthog squadrons a reprieve to continue operating through 2030. In July, a bipartisan group of Congressmen introduced a bill that, if passed and signed into law, would require the Air Force to keep flying the jets through Fiscal Year 2033. Still, the aircraft’s eventual fate appears increasingly clear, with growing numbers heading to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) boneyard in Arizona for storage, including the last one from Nellis.

The ongoing retirement of the A-10 is bringing a fundamental change in how the Air Force organizes and executes the missions for which the Warthog became synonymous. Nellis will remain an important center for developing those capabilities, even though the aircraft around which that expertise was built is no longer part of the equation.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post The A-10 Era Is Over At Nellis AFB appeared first on TWZ.

The pilot of a U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 52nd Fighter Wing safely ejected before the aircraft crashed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, according to the wing.

The pilot is still receiving medical treatment, the wing said in a statement. Emergency response teams are still on the scene. The cause of the incident, which took place about 2:30 p.m. local time, is still under investigation and additional details will be released when available.

The crash happened as the jet was on approach to land at the installation, located in the western German region of Rhineland-Palatinate, according to the New York Post.  

“Following a plane crash in the vicinity of U.S. Air Base Spangdahlem, fire and emergency response teams from the Eifel District of Bitburg-Pruem were dispatched to the scene,” The Associated Press reported, citing the district. 

Images emerged on social media showing smoke rising in the distance.

An F-16 fighter jet has reportedly crashed at the U.S. Spangdahlem Air Base in western Germany on Tuesday afternoon.

Witnesses reported seeing a jet rapidly descend before a large column of black smoke appeared near the runway.

Local reports say two aircraft had taken off and… pic.twitter.com/MB4S6zKQm5

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 22, 2026

The F-16 crash at Spangdahlem was the second mishap in a week for USAF F-16s. On Sept. 17, an F-16 from the 149th Fighter Wing at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas crashed in northern Michigan. The pilot in that incident also ejected.

According to air traffic control (ATC) audio, the pilot’s wingman said at the time of the Michigan crash, “we have a possible mayday. My wingman may have taken a bird.” TWZ cannot independently confirm what caused the crash. The audio continues and offers a fairly dramatic and raw look at how the incident occurred over the air waves.

F-16 crash ATC audio, BUCK 11 flt x2 F-16s were flying along the VFR low level route VR634 when the 11 advised MINNEAPOLIS CENTER that his wingman may have hit a bird and was going to eject just south of Traverse City, Michigan

Audio via @liveatc https://t.co/sUR7KZBR2j pic.twitter.com/QdcE4ePiUd

— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) September 17, 2026

This is a developing story.

UPDATE: 3:35 PM Eastern –

The 52nd Fighter Wing provided some additional information.

“The aircraft was returning to Spangdahlem Air Base following a routine training flight involving four F-16s when the crash occurred,” the wing stated. “The remaining three aircraft diverted to Ramstein Air Base and landed safely. The pilot of the crashed aircraft ejected safely and received medical care.”

“Emergency response personnel responded to the scene, with local German fire departments and emergency medical services providing support,” the wing added. “German emergency response partners have offered their continued assistance as needed. The 52nd Fighter Wing appreciates the swift response and continued support of our German partners.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post USAF F-16 Crashes At Spangdahlem Air Base In Germany appeared first on TWZ.

General Atomics has given us the first look at its FQ-42 Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone flying in formation with crewed fighters. The U.S. Air Force is continuing to expand crewed-uncrewed teaming and other testing of the FQ-42, as well as Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury, as it aims to start fielding both types around the end of the decade.

The newly released picture from General Atomics’ Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI), seen at the top of this story, shows an FQ-42 in flight together with an F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and an F-15E Strike Eagle. The company has also disclosed the delivery of another Vengeance drone to the Air Force, this time to the service’s main drone operations hub at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

“The FQ-42 that arrived at Creech will continue regular test and evaluation operations with the Air Force aimed at experimentation with the new aircraft,” according to a press release GA-ASI put out today. “Previous efforts with Vengeance and other GA-ASI jets, including [the] XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station and MQ-20 Avenger – have found the trio of combat jets flying in various scenarios that push the boundaries of combat aviation. GA-ASI’s jets have flown semi-autonomously and autonomously with various AI pilots and under collaborative control of human fighter pilots operating F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II jets.”

GA-ASI has previously confirmed that the XQ-67A, an earlier experimental drone TWZ was first to report on, served as a prototype for the development of the FQ-42. The Air Force’s F-22s also look set to be the first operational airborne controllers for USAF CCAs.

As mentioned, the Air Force is steadily working to broaden the scale and scope of testing involving the FQ-42 and FQ-44 to include more and more operationally relevant scenarios. Both types are set to make their first appearance at a large-force employment (LFE) exercise in December, offering a valuable new opportunity for deeper and more realistic integration with crewed fighters.

The Air Force otherwise continues to lay the groundwork for future CCA operations, including through a major round of testing at Creech in July, which TWZ was first to report on. The service is heavily focused now just on figuring out how the drones will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated on a day-to-day basis. A dedicated test squadron called the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU), established at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, has been leading those efforts.

Work is also underway to demonstrate tactical capabilities, such as the FQ-44 launching an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) for the first time earlier this year.

New test footage: first missile shot from YFQ-44A.

YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target.

The test, executed out of @EdwardsAFB, represents an important step in turning CCA into an operational capability. pic.twitter.com/70cRIs6uXJ

— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) July 15, 2026

“We’re on path right now to do our air-to-air shot coming up here in the near future,” Mike Shortsleeve, Vice President for Strategy Business Development at GA-ASI, told TWZ‘s Jamie Hunter on the floor of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference last week.

Last week, GA-ASI separately announced a new demonstration of semi-autonomous air-to-air combat capability involving crewed F-5AT Advanced Tiger jets belonging to private adversary air contractor Tactical Air Support, Inc. and an unspecified “CCA test aircraft.” The company did use a picture of an Avenger drone to illustrate the press release. The F-5s and the CCA surrogate were equipped with infrared search-and-track sensors (IRST) during the testing.

“The live exercise proved that a CCA and a manned fighter can collaborate to fuse sensor data from AMS-GRA-compliant sensors to track, engage, and eliminate an airborne target while using a Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) data link to accomplish seamless coordination between the two aircraft,” according to the GA-ASI release.

“The demonstration utilized BLOS communication between the CCA and the airborne F-5, enabling the Advanced Tiger to send data about targets from an AMS-GRA-compatible system. These commands were relayed to the CCA’s TacACE [Tactical Autonomy Ecosystem software] system,” the release added. “This flight showed that many companies’ platforms can interoperate using the plug-and-play government reference architectures ecosystem. The U.S. Air Force isn’t locked into using a single vendor or system.”

GA-ASI has previously demonstrated the ability of MQ-20s flying with podded IRSTs to detect and track aerial targets semi-automatically. Generally speaking, IRSTs look set to be an important sensor for future CCAs, and are particularly relevant in the air-to-air role. As we have written in the past:

IRSTs are especially valuable for helping spot stealthy targets with features designed to reduce their radar cross-sections since they detect and track infrared emissions. By extension, IRSTs are also immune to radio frequency electronic warfare jamming. As passive sensors, they do not emit their own signals that could alert a target to the fact they are being tracked, either. IRSTs can still be used to cue or otherwise be linked to other sensors, including active electronically-scanned array radars. Fusing data from multiple sources can provide higher fidelity tracks of multiple targets, as well as improved situational awareness overall.

Air-to-air combat is expected to be the primary mission set, at least initially, for Air Force CCAs. At the same time, an air-to-ground role for the FQ-42 and FQ-44, and/or other future CCA-type drones the Air Force might acquire, is emerging on the horizon. Anduril has already fit-checked a variety of air-to-ground ordnance on Fury.

As it stands now, the Air Force is looking to have its first operational CCAs in service toward the end of the decade. The service is also presently aiming to have a total fleet of at least 500 CCAs of all types by 2032.

“If we can’t be ready, then certainly you’re not going to have the forces that you need and the numbers that you need going forward. This signifies that mass is certainly important again, but also autonomy is just as important,” General Atomics’ Shortsleeve told us last week in talking about the Air Force’s CCA fleet size target. “So the ability to have these autonomous systems, whether they’re bringing in additional weapons, sensing capability, whatever it is, all of those working in a collaborative environment, whether it’s manned, unmanned teaming, or unmanned and unmanned capabilities, that right there is what’s going to help the warfighter in the future.”

“And when we say autonomy, it’s not just strictly this is going to go off and do its own thing. It’s going to be directed,” he added. “Whether it’s on the ground, in the air, [it] makes no difference to the system itself. It’s going to work hand-in-hand [with humans]. So that human-machine teaming, that’s what they’re really focusing on. There is figuring out how to best use this capability in the advancement of actually having to employ it in [the] real world.”

Though just flying in formation is very different from collaboration with a high degree of autonomy, the new picture of the FQ-42 together with the F-35A and the F-15E is a window into the future teamed operations the Air Force is hoping to build.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post General Atomics FQ-42A Vengeance CCA Now Flying Together With USAF Fighters appeared first on TWZ.

A Florida fishing charter boat made a very unusual catch Saturday while operating near Eglin Air Force Base. Located in the western end of the Florida Panhandle, Eglin is home of the U.S. Air Force weapons test wing. Hot Spots Charters pulled a delta-wing aerial drone out of the water during an excursion, according to local charter captain Charlie Green. The recovered drone closely resembles a clone of the Iranian Shahed-136 one-way attack weapon, specifically the U.S. military’s Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) that took center stage during its first combat use in Operation Epic Fury. The target version of that drone is built by SpecktreWorks and is designated the FLM-136. It was originally designed for mimicking one-way attack munitions, specifically the Shahed-136, which it was reverse engineered from, for testing and training before it was weaponized into LUCAS.

An Eglin AFB spokesperson told us the installation recently lost a drone, but would not confirm it was the same one found by Hot Spots Charters.

“I can confirm that we were doing a test and the test article went down,” the spokesperson told us, declining to provide further details about what kind of drone, when it was lost or the location it went down. They referred us to the Pentagon, which could not immediately provide any additional details. 

“The drone was found by local charter Capt. Daniel Arsenault with Hot Spots Charters,” said Green, who is also an aviation photographer whose work can be found at Aquatic Charlie on social media. “He saw the object at a distance and went over to check it out. When he did, he pulled a good size mahi-mahi out from underneath it, complementing his already stocked cooler full of fish from that morning charter. His passengers helped him haul it aboard.”

“Arsenault and his charter company did all the due diligence possible to notify local agencies of the recovery- and was eventually collected by one of them,” Green added. He did not know which agency.

Images taken of the drone shared with us by Green show that it did not have the engine, propeller or the nose cone/seeker intact. Losing these kind of components is common for impacts into water.

While the Eglin spokesperson offered scant details, the host unit at the installation is the 96th Test Wing, which is the “test and evaluation center for Air Force air-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, command and control systems, and Air Force Special Operations Command systems,” according to the wing’s homepage. It oversees the massive Eglin Gulf Test Range, which “provides approximately 120,000 square miles of overwater airspace, covering the eastern third of the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida panhandle to the Florida Keys. The land range covers 724 square miles and contains 70 specific test and training areas, including an approved depleted uranium test range and the only qualified air-to-ground supersonic range east of the Mississippi River.”

As noted in the opening of this article, the LUCAS drone was used for the first time in combat during the opening day of the Operation Epic Fury war on Iran on Feb. 28. 

“Costing approximately $35,000 per platform, LUCAS is a low-cost, scalable system that provides cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional long-range U.S. systems that can deliver similar effects,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, told TWZ when the command stood up Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS), the military’s first one-way attack drone unit, back in December. “The drone system has an extensive range and the ability to operate beyond line of sight, providing significant capability across CENTCOM’s vast operating area.”

“LUCAS drones deployed by CENTCOM have an extensive range and are designed to operate autonomously,” CENTCOM added in a press release. “They can be launched with different mechanisms to include catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff, and mobile ground and vehicle systems.”

TFSS falls under the auspices of U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), which oversees U.S. special operations activities across the Middle East.

While we aren’t sure if the drone found by Hot Spots Charters is the one lost by Eglin, it wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened in Florida. For example, in 2021, beachcombers in Florida’s Palm Beach County found a U.S. Air Force BQM-167A high-performance target drone that washed ashore.

BREAKING: Military drone washes up on beach at Ocean Ridge Hammock Park https://t.co/JXMYTAdXcP pic.twitter.com/rHW5Dyv94p

— WPTV (@WPTV) March 19, 2021

Indeed, the Air Force has a handful of 120-foot boats, the only vessels in its service, to help recover drones after they are shot down during live-fire exercises, or otherwise need to be recovered from these waters. The boats are operated by a contracted crew from Florida Offshore and retrieve around 100 of the drones each year.

The FLM-136’s origins as a target drone are highly relevant here. Counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) capabilities are being hotly pursued on all fronts across the U.S. military as the threat from them has ballooned. During the war in Ukraine and multiple engagements with Iran, including Operation Epic Fury, one-way attack drones have proven to be a massive threat that is heavily influencing how wars are fought. As far as Eglin AFB goes, maybe the most high-profile C-UAS development as of late that has emerged from there has been arming USAF fighters with FALCO APKWS laser-guided rockets to shoot down exactly the same kind of threat that the FLM-136 is meant to emulate. This program began in 2019, which TWZ was first to report on, but was finally rushed into service years later as the standoff with Iran went hot. Now there are many other programs aimed at dealing with these same threats, including a more capable “fire and forget” air-to-air APKWS.

LUCAS development is continuing at a high-pace, with its ability to swarm cooperatively with other LUCAS drones — a feature we reported as central to the LUCAS vision when the existence of the program was disclosed — being worked on now. You can read more about this here. These systems need sanitized airspace for development activities, and the vast ranges over the gulf are some of the best in the country for it.

So, it’s not surprising to see an FLM-136 floating in the waters off Eglin AFB. Even in the war with Iran, there were multiple losses of LUCAS drones where they were found intact. These weapons are produced to be risked in large numbers, and some failing, for whatever reason, is just part of the calculus.

Locals in Iraq appear to have recovered a crashed and almost entirely intact Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), an American copy of the Iranian Shahed-136 Attack Drone, which is confirmed to have been used recently by Task Force Scorpion Strike during U.S. attacks on… pic.twitter.com/SEqO6627en

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 2, 2026

We will update this story with any additional details we can find about this drone. Though we don’t yet know for sure where it came from, one thing is for certain, the folks on the Hot Spots Charters boat that found it will always have a good tale about the one that didn’t get away.

UPDATE: 2:38 PM Eastern Sept. 21 –

Eglin Air Force Base provided us with an update.

“On Thursday, Sept. 17, a LUCAS UAS impacted the water during routine scheduled testing on the Eglin AFB Range. The aircraft has been recovered and is back in the Department’s possession.

We do not have any additional details to provide at this time.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post Shahed-136 Clone Found By Florida Fisherman, Eglin AFB Admits It Lost A Drone (Updated) appeared first on TWZ.

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.

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

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