Ebbing Air National Guard Base will become the latest U.S.-based site dedicated to training foreign pilots across the global F-35 Joint Strike Fighter enterprise, which now encompasses more than 3,500 jets in 18 countries.

The new hub will allow more instructor pilots from the U.S. — the largest member of the F-35 coalition at more than 2,400 jets — to share their expertise with a rotating cast of nations who have less operational experience with one of the world’s most advanced fighters or lack the resources to host a multinational school of their own.

Learning from the U.S. can make the international coalition sharper in combat, Col. David Skalicky, who oversees the project as commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base, told Air Force Times. Military officials argue that familiarity can prove crucial if the countries must go to war together.

“This is really about increasing the capability and capacity of our allies and partners,” he said.

Poland is slated to arrive as the first foreign F-35 user on campus in September, followed by Finland, Germany, Switzerland and Singapore in the years ahead.

They’ll learn from the new 85th Fighter Group and 57th Fighter Squadron, expected to open at Ebbing July 2, an Air Force spokesperson said.

F-35 pilots from Italy, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands already train at Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base; Belgium is slated to begin lessons there as well. But Luke lacks the resources and room to welcome students from more than a dozen other countries, spurring the international coalition to look for another site where foreign pilots can learn from the Americans.

The U.S. Air Force tapped Ebbing to host the foreign training mission in March 2023 after a fierce, yearslong lobbying effort by Michigan’s congressional delegation to bring the jets to Selfridge ANGB north of Detroit.

Typically, foreign militaries learn from U.S. pilots at bases that are already operating the same aircraft. Not so for Ebbing, at which F-35 training will become the only on-site flying mission.

The base will build new F-35 pilots from scratch, with students who have already qualified to fly fighters but are getting their first taste of the fifth-generation plane itself, Skalicky said.

As many as 36 jets will arrive on base, including 24 F-35s. Ebbing will also host up to 12 F-16s as part of a Singaporean training unit that is transferring from Luke, said Col. Adam Rice, an Air Education and Training Command official tasked with coordinating the project’s progress.

The Air Force expects about four pilots will graduate from Ebbing in 2025 before growing to about three dozen graduates each year through the end of the decade, Rice said.

Trainees will start their seven-month Joint Strike Fighter journey at Eglin — the Air Force’s closest active duty F-35 site — where they’ll be exposed to the F-35′s controls and tactics in classroom lessons and simulated sorties. The program will be split between Eglin and Ebbing until the new location finishes building a simulator facility of its own.

In Florida, they’ll jump from virtual takeoffs and landings to one-on-one aerial dogfights and multi-jet offensives, Skalicky said.

“We usually progress from that point into surface attack [and] suppression of enemy air defense, as well as some higher mission sets like offensive counter-air, escorting strikers … or being part of a strike package,” he said.

After about three months, students will trek more than 700 miles to Ebbing for the second half of the course, when they’ll take to the skies to practice what they’ve learned.

Rice said the project is working to expand the existing training airspace at Ebbing. The site may bring in low-cost threat emitters, or hardware that replicates surface-to-air missile systems so pilots can learn to evade enemy air defenses.

Air Education and Training Command boss Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson “has promised ‘first-class’ training, not ‘world-class’ training, at Ebbing,” Rice said. “It won’t be a training space like Nellis, for instance, but it will be good-quality training for the [foreign military sales] customers.”

Some who graduate will head back to their home countries, where they’ll join their first F-35 units. Others will return to Eglin for further training to become instructor pilots in order to build their own domestic training pipelines, Skalicky said.

To transform the Air National Guard base of about 1,000 troops and civilian employees and an MQ-9 drone wing into a top-tier training range for high-tech fighters, the Air Force is embarking on a $850 million project that is expected to finish by the end of 2028.

Because the clock is ticking for troops to arrive at Ebbing, the Air Force plans to first host classes in an array of trailers and tension-fabric shelters on base. Those temporary facilities will tide over the training enterprise for a few years as the service renovates existing spaces like maintenance shops, while building Joint Strike Fighter-specific facilities for simulators and storage.

Singapore, whose forces will be permanently stationed at Ebbing, is bringing the F-35B, the vertical takeoff-and-landing version of the jet also flown by the U.S. Marine Corps. Because the Air Force’s variant doesn’t have the same capability, the service has to find other instructor pilots to help the Singaporeans, and ensure the flightline is reinforced with special concrete that can withstand the jet’s forces, Rice said.

In September, airmen from Eglin will hold a training exercise at Ebbing to wring out any issues at the site before foreign countries begin arriving later that month, Skalicky said.

But there’s still plenty of work ahead for the complicated project, which requires Air Force officials to weave the wants and needs of multiple countries into a cohesive training ground while navigating erratic congressional funding and a volatile construction market.

“Post-COVID, we’ve had challenges with supply and demand, construction, laborers, you name it. We’re still experiencing that across the enterprise,” said Col. George Nichols, deputy director of facility engineering at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center.

“[I’ve] been doing this for 23 years, and this is one of the most complex beddowns that we’ve done,” he said.

As the service hashes out the details of its future force, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David Flosi are urging airmen to stick together and trust the process.

“I have been through many chief of staff transitions and watched how the Air Force is trying to find its way forward,” Allvin said in a joint interview with Flosi in early May. “Sometimes you don’t need a new thing; sometimes you just need to follow through on the old things.”

Many of the ideas the service wants to bring to fruition have been in the works for at least a decade. Its leaders don’t pretend to have all the answers.

In his first year on the job, Allvin wants a better idea of what air wings of the future could look like as the service prepares for the prospect of a high-tech, fast-paced war with China.

Wings are the Air Force’s largest base-level units, and manage thousands of airmen across a particular mission in a local area, such as the 1st Fighter Wing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, or the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. Some wings, like the 355th Wing at Davis-Monthan AFB, are in charge of forces spanning multiple missions.

The service has proposed tailoring its existing wings into three categories: deployable combat wings, or those that can bring offensive units like fighter squadrons overseas; combat generation wings, or those comprised of mobility and similar support units; and in-place combat wings, or those with units that perform their mission from home, like missileers and cyber operators.

If successful, the idea could separate combat-focused units from the support staff tasked with running the base itself, rather than keeping wing commanders in charge of operations both at home and abroad.

Allvin said the Air Force expects to better understand what resources each wing should own, from pilots and other aircrews to ground support staff and office management, by the end of September. Bringing units together under the new construct will require airmen from different bases to train together, he said, but it won’t mean widespread relocations.

“We cannot just pick up and move 250 people from one base to another base,” Allvin said.

Training could notionally start next fiscal year, Allvin said, as the Air Force learns from its budding air task forces that are a stepping stone to a final plan for the service’s wings.

That work can also give the Air Force a clearer path to another major priority: boosting readiness to fight and win America’s wars. Allvin argues the service should have a better idea of its ability to succeed against an advanced adversary by next spring.

“We have not picked up and gone out and said, ‘How ready is this part of our Air Force?’” he said. “Let’s take them somewhere else. Let’s generate combat power; let’s regenerate combat power. Let’s continue to do that for X amount of time. That’s mission readiness.”

Service leaders have promised that a new large-scale training exercise, slated to take place in the Pacific in summer 2025, will test whether the changes lead to a stronger force in practice.

That will come as the service’s list of skills all troops should cultivate before deployment, dubbed “ready airman training,” will evolve to get units to focus less on whether they’re in compliance and more on how those abilities affect a mission’s success, Flosi said.

Those efforts are set to build on the Air Force’s two-year deployment cycle, which rotates squadrons through 18 months of training and maintenance in preparation for six months of real-world operations.

But it’s unclear whether the new force generation process, designed to improve unit readiness through a more predictable schedule, plus other changes to training requirements — like asking airmen to learn skills outside of their own career field — have led to meaningful benefits so far.

“Because we’re in transition, it is a mixed bag,” Allvin said.

For instance, troops who manage the flow of forces around the world can better articulate the risk of deploying a fighter unit longer than expected, Allvin said. On the other hand, some units feel crunched by the influx of new training expectations on top of a mission tempo that remains high.

“We were just out at [Joint Base] Charleston and Columbus and Tyndall [AFBs],” Allvin said. “We got that feedback that, ‘Yeah, we know where it’s going to be. But right here, in the meantime, we’re actually having to do some extra work.’”

“We’re empathetic to that, and we’re trying to see if we can move through that transition period as quickly as possible,” he said. “It will be challenging, and people need to have faith that we will get there.”

To aid in that transition, the Air Force wants to streamline pieces of its training enterprise under Airman Development Command — previously Air Education and Training Command — for a more holistic approach to delivering the skills troops need. The command is expected to begin operating with new authorities and a fresh vision this fall.

“We have two ways to educate and train and qualify an airman,” Flosi said. “There’s these institutional competencies that all airmen should understand, and then there’s your occupational competencies. Airman Development Command, part of that stand up … is to fuse those together.”

Airmen should no longer break from their day jobs to formally “learn about the Big Air Force,” Flosi said. “We need those things to be integrated at the same time.”

Flosi, who took over as the top enlisted airman in March, added that he’s working with senior enlisted leaders across the Air Force to instill a renewed sense of purpose across the enlisted corps.

“We’ve unintentionally focused on things as an individual,” he said. “We really want to focus more on what it means to be an airman, and the profession of arms.”

Allvin said he’s received mixed responses to the dozens of updates, large and small, that Department of the Air Force leaders unveiled in February in the service’s most sweeping modernization push in decades. Those initiatives ranged from relaunching a warrant officer corps to opening new acquisition offices to rethinking deployments.

“As we rolled these things out, they said, ‘Well, OK, what’s the answer?’” Allvin said. Then the questions became: “‘Why’d you do this without us?’ … ‘You don’t know what you’re doing?’”

But others appreciate that the Air Force is pushing airmen outside their comfort zone by asking them to learn a broader set of skills, making teams more flexible under pressure and forging stronger personal connections to the service and its mission, Allvin said.

Their experiments in traveling leaner, spreading smaller crews across remote airfields with few resources, are yielding lessons for the entire force.

For instance, Flosi recalled a 12-person special operations team in Japan that set up an isolated hub to serve as a pit stop for aircraft flying nonstop missions around the Pacific. The team found it needed fewer people than expected to create the outpost, leaving them free to brainstorm how the extra manpower could come in handy.

“Those are the types of lessons that we have to leverage,” Flosi said. “They’re pathfinders.”

It’s not only airmen who need to be clear-eyed about the challenges the future may hold. As Allvin mulls how to ready troops for the next conflict, he recalls another time America was caught off-guard: Sept. 11.

On the day the Twin Towers fell, then-Lt. Col. Allvin, commander of the 905th Air Refueling Squadron at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota, realized his airmen’s families needed to be part of the discussion on preparedness as well.

As America went off to war, “there were conversations like, ‘Well, if I’d have known this was going to be part of it, I don’t know if I’d have signed up for it,’ by the spouses,” he said. “The families weren’t really thinking about this.”

The experience has spurred him to consider how to bring Air Force families further into the fold, ensuring they’re supported at home and encouraging conversations about how daily life would change if troops must again scramble to respond to an attack on the U.S. or an ally.

“That was a pivotal moment to understand what it means to be able to lead and have the families be taken care of in a time when the world gets taken out from under you,” Allvin said.

He’s confident airmen and their families will rise to the challenges of a new era of war.

“Our airmen are brilliant,” Allvin said. “They are switched on, they are dialed into this, and they deserve every bit of leadership that we can give them.”

Bringing reservists who already work in space-related jobs into the fold will mark the Space Force’s next step toward what it hopes will be a more flexible system for managing troops across full-time and part-time roles.

“This is an important first step toward fully integrating critical space expertise from the Reserve into our force,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in the release. “We’ve been serving side-by-side together, supporting the same mission, for longer than the Space Force has existed.”

Those invited to apply span officers and enlisted airmen across multiple fields, up to the rank of colonel for officers and chief master sergeant for enlisted.

Reserve officers who may join the Space Force include those in space operations (13S); cyberspace operations (17X); intelligence (14N); developmental engineering (62E); acquisition management (63A); and scientists (61X).

Scientists and others whose roles don’t exist in the Space Force will need to become a developmental engineer or acquisition manager, the service said.

Enlisted reservists who may apply to join include space systems operators (1C6); intelligence specialists (1N0); imagery analysts (1N1), signals intelligence analysts (1N2); cryptologic language analysts (1N3); network intelligence analysts (1N4); targeting analysts (1N8); cyber defense operators (1D7X1); spectrum operations technicians (1D7X2); and cable and antennae defense operators (1D7X3).

The application window runs through Nov. 30. The Space Force will consider applicants at three selection boards held in September and November 2024 and January 2025. Transfers will begin in fiscal year 2025.

People chosen to join the Space Force must agree to at least two years of active-duty service, or up to six years for enlisted troops, among other eligibility requirements.

Joining the Space Force may also require the former reservists to move to a new base, the service said. That could prove difficult for current part-timers who need to stay put because of family, educational or career obligations.

“If a transfer applicant is assigned at or near a Space Force location and an authorized vacancy exists, it may be possible for the member to remain local for their first assignment if that is their stated preference,” the Space Force said. “Members that are not assigned at or near a Space Force location, or members assigned at or near a Space Force location, but no authorized vacancy exists, will likely be reassigned, which may require [a permanent change of station].”

The Space Force — which remains the smallest branch of the armed forces by far — has grown to around 9,000 troops, all of whom serve on active duty.

The Air Force Reserve did not immediately answer Tuesday how many of its airmen still serve in space missions. That includes the Reserve’s only space wing: the 310th Space Wing, which handles space surveillance, missile warning and a host of other missions from Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado.

“The Space Force is about to integrate some of the most talented space operators,” Air Force Reserve boss Lt. Gen. John Healy said in the release. “I have no doubt they will be key to advancing security in the space domain.”

Reserve airmen who work in space operations must transfer to the Space Force as a full- or part-time guardian or jump to a different career field within the Air Force, the release said. The Air Force plans to discontinue its space operations field because the Space Force now oversees those units.

Part-time spots in the Space Force are slated to open in 2026 once the service has established the infrastructure and policies needed to bring troops into those jobs.

The Space Force hopes to create a new personnel system under which troops can switch between full-time and part-time jobs, potentially offering more options to people who, for instance, want to cut their hours to care for family or pursue a civilian job opportunity. The service hopes consolidating those troops into a single component will streamline the assignment process and prove less bureaucratic than the traditional active-duty Guard and Reserve components.

If the Department of the Air Force’s plan to move space-focused Air National Guard units under that same umbrella takes effect, the Space Force said, Guardsmen can expect a similar transfer process as their reserve counterparts.

Under the new policy, a person can collect a daily stipend based on their monthly housing allowance rate without dependents, the Department of the Air Force said May 15. For instance, a major who lives near Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, while attending Air Command and Staff College can earn about $1,600 a month.

The new allowance is paid on top of the housing stipend an airman or guardian already receives at their primary residence.

Troops qualify for the pay bump if they are stationed at the training location for less than a year, have orders to return to their previous base, and do not live in free government housing like dormitories.

The change offers more flexibility for troops whose permanent changes of station can financially crunch families who stay behind while a service member is away at school. Those monthslong relocations are critical steps on an airman or guardian’s effort to climb the career ladder, but can squeeze a family’s budget when trying to pay for two homes at once.

“We understand that these short moves, while necessary, can be disruptive to the lives and finances of airmen and guardians with families — particularly in situations where they are slated to return to their original duty station,” Alex Wagner, the service’s civilian personnel boss, said in a release. “This new allowance gives our service members and their families additional resources to weather these times away without the added stress of financial uncertainties.”

Congress directed the military to adopt the new policy as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which became law in December 2022. Pay is retroactive to Dec. 23, 2022.

The Pentagon added the rule to its Joint Travel Regulation last fall. The Air Force and Space Force’s rule took effect May 7; the Navy and Marine Corps enacted their own versions in March. The Army has not yet issued a parallel update.

“The November 2023 Joint Travel Regulation update entitled eligible Army service members to these allowances even without Army policy implementation,” Army spokesperson Heather Hagan said Wednesday. “We are in the process of updating our policies.”

Bauernfeind’s selection by President Joe Biden on Tuesday comes fewer than 18 months after he took over as the head of Air Force Special Operations Command — an unusually brief tenure for a top officer of an Air Force major command.

“I am humbled by the nomination to be the 22nd superintendent of our academy,” Bauernfeind said in a USAFA release. “The opportunity to develop warfighters, leaders of character and quality, and critical thinkers for our Air Force and Space Force is an honor. I look forward to building on the legacy of Lt. Gen. Clark and all prior superintendents as we ready our future officers to lead and win in uncertain, complex and contested environments.”

A 1991 USAFA graduate, Bauernfeind spent the first part of his career as a pilot, slipping troops and equipment into combat zones on the MC-130J transport aircraft and the MQ-9 attack drone before amassing more than a decade of experience in senior leadership roles at special ops organizations around the globe.

U.S. Special Operations Command is “extremely proud that the Air Force nominated Lt. Gen. Bauernfeind as the next Air Force Academy superintendent,” SOCOM spokesperson Col. Allie Weiskopf said Friday. “He is exactly the right person to lead the next generation of Air Force officers.”

The nominee to replace him, Brig. Gen. Michael Conley, was tapped to make an uncommon jump from one-star to three-star general in order to fill the seat.

Conley has served as AFSOC’s operations director at Hurlburt Field, Florida, since July. The decorated helicopter and tiltrotor pilot earned his commission from the Air Force Academy in 1996, going on to hold leadership and staff roles across AFSOC, U.S. Space Command, Air Mobility Command and the Joint Staff.

Prior to his current role, Conley’s most recent job within AFSOC was commanding the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt from 2018 to 2020.

“Brig. Gen. Conley was nominated as the Air Force special operations commander because he is the most qualified officer with significant experience in special forces and integrating tactical units, joint operation centers and inter-agencies,” an Air Force official said Friday.

The transition comes as Air Force special operations leaders have pushed for years to reorient the community to succeed in future conflicts that are expected to move faster, require more stealth and deception, and prioritize digital attacks over traditional roles like calling in airstrikes on the ground.

Bauernfeind served as U.S. Special Operations Command’s vice commander from 2020 to 2022 before taking over as AFSOC commander that December. He succeeded Gen. Jim Slife — who spearheaded the organization’s modernization efforts, drawing criticism from traditionalists — at AFSOC after the four-star was promoted to serve as Air Force vice chief of staff.

Air Force special operators are in the midst of bringing on a new fixed-wing aircraft, dubbed the OA-1K, to fly armed overwatch missions in support of counterterrorism operations. The new fleet is slated to enter the inventory through 2030, though U.S. Special Operations Command in its fiscal year 2025 budget signaled plans to buy fewer than the expected 75 aircraft due to resource constraints.

Tensions have periodically flared between the Air Force, SOCOM and lawmakers who, over the past 15 years, have pushed for a new aircraft as a modern, affordable solution for America’s enduring counterterror fight, while at other times questioning why a possibly vulnerable plane is needed at all.

The Air Force command has also sought to rethink the role of combat diving in Air Force operations and update other aspects of training to reflect the needs of modern warfare.

AFSOC is now in the midst of returning its CV-22 Osprey fleet to the air following a fatal crash off the coast of Japan that killed eight airmen in November and prompted the U.S. military to ground hundreds of Ospreys for months. The Pentagon believes a mechanical failure caused the accident but has not publicly revealed which component was at fault.

If confirmed by the Senate, Bauernfeind will succeed Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, who joined the academy in 2020. There, Bauernfeind would become the latest three-star general to shepherd the four-year university as it expands its offerings to students looking to join the Space Force, tries to curb the number of sexual assaults among cadets, looks to continue the recent success of its NCAA Division I football team, and more.

USAFA graduates earn a bachelor of science degree and a commission as a second lieutenant.

Clark, a bomber pilot and nuclear operations official who became USAFA’s first Black superintendent, oversaw the gradual return of more than 4,000 cadets to in-person classes amid the coronavirus pandemic — and dealt with the fallout of a cheating scandal that became one of the most widespread spates of academic misconduct in the school’s history.

“Leading the academy has been an amazing experience, and I know that our academy is in great hands with Lt. Gen. Bauernfeind,” Clark said in a release.

He plans to retire in June and will begin a second career as head of the College Football Playoff.

This story was updated May 20 at 10:55 a.m. ET to include comments from Bauernfeind and Clark and to clarify initiatives underway within Air Force Special Operations Command.

The unnamed pilot, a member of the 80th Fighter Squadron at South Korea’s Kunsan Air Base, safely ejected before his F-16 hit the ground on the morning of May 6, 2023. The jet was destroyed at a cost of nearly $30 million.

The airman had taken off from Osan Air Base minutes earlier to fly a routine training sortie as part of Beverly Herd, the 8th Fighter Wing’s local readiness exercise, the report said. He was manning the second aircraft in a four-ship formation.

According to the investigation report, the power loss caused a “cascading failure or restart” of the pilot’s primary flight and navigation instruments. But the jet didn’t alert the pilot to use the standby display as it should have, instead showing him mismatched flight data across the two systems. Clouds prevented the airman from using visual cues to orient the jet at low altitude.

The disparate information “caused the [pilot] to become spatially disoriented and unable to maintain aircraft control in the weather and at a low altitude,” Col. Lynn Savage, who led the investigation, wrote in the report.

Shortly after landing on the ground, the pilot hopped on the messaging app Slack to tell his wingmen that he had ejected and was OK, according to the report. He was taken to Osan by ambulance and treated for minor injuries.

Because the F-16 was destroyed, investigators couldn’t determine what caused the electrical outage that ultimately downed the jet. Had the power stayed on or the skies remained clear, Savage said, the accident may not have happened.

The May 2023 crash marked the first in a string of F-16 accidents on the Korean Peninsula in the span of nine months, and the fourth Fighting Falcon mishap within a year.

In December 2023, another 8th Fighter Wing pilot safely ejected from an F-16 following an in-flight emergency during a training mission. In January, a third pilot from the same wing ejected as their F-16 crashed into the sea off the west coast of South Korea. And in April, an airman from the 49th Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, also escaped their jet as it went down near White Sands National Park.

Each incident is still under investigation.

Around three F-16s are totaled on average each year, according to the latest available data compiled by the Air Force Safety Center in 2021.

The service is in the process of phasing out its F-16 fleet in favor of more advanced fighters. It received its first F-16C in 1984; more than 800 of the C- and D-model jets currently reside in the Air Force inventory.

New command teams are slated to arrive at installations across the U.S. this summer, as the Air Force launches so-called “air task forces” that it hopes will better prepare airmen for combat than in decades past.

Bases chosen to pilot the initiative include Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona; Scott AFB, Illinois; Joint Base San Antonio and Dyess AFB, Texas; Fairchild AFB, Washington; and Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina.

The bases — whose squadrons span the breadth of many core Air Force missions, from fighters and bombers to airlifters and refueling tankers — will each receive about 50 airmen to run each task force, an Air Force official told reporters.

Task forces will train together over the next several months before starting to head overseas next year. The first three task forces will deploy in October 2025, including two to the Middle East and one to the Pacific. Another three groups will rotate in to replace those task forces in April 2026.

It’s a departure from the piecemeal approach that’s prevailed in the post-9/11 wars, during which the Air Force has scrambled to make as many troops available as possible amid an often unrelenting pace of operations. Airmen are often plucked from various bases and combined into combat units overseas, without first knowing or training alongside wingmen outside their own squadron.

“This is walking us back toward the model that we had during the Cold War, where we know each other, we train together, you’re building the team [in] peacetime in preparation for deployment,” the Air Force official said.

The Air Force has said it expects the task forces, led by colonels, to sit alongside existing wing commanders at each base. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin has handpicked each new commander based on their experience and ability to lead airmen through a fundamental shift, a service spokesperson said.

Each task force will include commanders and an executive staff to handle matters like personnel and logistics; aircrews and maintainers to run combat missions; and support squadrons to keep airfields running smoothly.

Smaller teams will number hundreds of airmen; larger ones may span thousands, the service said.

In the coming weeks, the Air Force will select which squadrons will come together to form the combat support units attached to each task force. Those airmen in jobs like civil engineering, communications and security forces would coalesce into a single team while deployed, the service said.

Because those support staff would no longer be siloed in different squadrons based on their jobs, the Air Force said, they’d be expected to take on a wider range of responsibilities as needed downrange. The Air Force has encouraged units to train as “multicapable airmen” who can chip in on protecting a base’s perimeter or moving cargo in addition to their main job.

Lessons learned from the air task force experiment will inform how the service adopts other pieces of its deployment overhaul. The task forces are eventually expected to give way to “deployable combat wings” that can be dispatched for missions overseas, separate from other wings whose job will be to keep their base running at home.

Right now, those functions typically fall to one host wing in charge of preparing for war as well as protecting and supporting its home station.

Col. Morgan Lohse, commander of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson, told airmen Monday that most won’t see a difference in their daily operations as the changes unfold.

“In some cases, your organization may report to a new leader, but the typical tasks will continue,” Lohse said in a release Monday. “The [deployed combat wing] will continue to generate and employ air power and prepare for deployments. The [air base wing] will continue to support the base and now have a new emphasis on preparing for and fighting through a contested environment at home.”

For months, Air Force leaders have previewed their plans to overhaul how airmen deploy around the world. Various exercises, like Mobility Guardian and Agile Flag, have explored iterations of the idea while officials continued to hash out the minutiae of how those changes might work.

The service got its first real-world taste of how better acquainted combat forces might function in the future as the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.

An Air Force leadership team that had worked together before deploying to U.S. Central Command in the fall more easily reacted to the crisis because the trust they had built allowed them to move faster, the service official told reporters.

“Fast forward to April of this year, and pretty soon after this rotation of leaders deployed, the mass salvo of Iranian cruise missiles and attack drones occurred,” the official told reporters. “Many of those combat forces showed up that morning and executed that night to shoot down a bunch of those drones, but the leadership knew each other … and made a difference in how they were able to lead.”

An Air Force spokesperson declined to say which unit has helped pilot the new expeditionary model in the Middle East, citing security concerns.

Officials also hope the overhaul will make its teams more nimble and intuitive when competing for dominance with China, Russia and others whose military technologies could force the U.S. to move faster and with fewer resources on hand than in the war on terrorism.

“We need these changes now,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. “We are out of time to reoptimize our forces to meet the strategic challenges.”

A U.S. Air Force instructor pilot died from his injuries after his plane’s ejection seat activated while on the ground Monday at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

Capt. John Robertson of the 80th Operations Support Squadron died early Tuesday morning after being severely injured when the ejection seat of the T-6A Texan II aircraft he was sitting in activated during ground operations, the base said in a Tuesday release.

“This is a devastating loss for Captain Robertson’s family and loved ones, and for the entire 80th Flying Training Wing,” Col. Mitchell Cok, the acting wing commander, said in the release. “Captain Robertson was a highly valued airman and instructor pilot. Our deepest condolences go with all who knew and loved him.”

“We are thankful for the M1 maintenance team who immediately provided live-sustaining care, and for the heroic efforts of the security forces, fire and medical personnel here on base and at United Regional Hospital,” Cok added. “Their efforts allowed time for Captain Robertson’s family to be at his side when he passed.”

A student who was also sitting in the plane did not eject and was not injured, Sheppard spokesperson George Woodward told Air Force Times Tuesday.

The service has not confirmed whether the aircraft was moving at the time of the accident, Woodward added.

An interim safety board investigation was convened immediately following the incident, and a full Air Force safety investigation board is expected to be in place later this week, according to Tuesday’s release. The board will release its report when the investigation is complete.

The 80th Flying Training Wing is home to the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program, a key educational pipeline that has supplied new combat pilots to the transatlantic alliance for over 40 years.

The wing has trained more than half of all U.S. Air Force fighter pilots, as well as aviators hailing from Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

The joint program has churned out more than 8,000 pilots since it began in 1981 — a mission that has taken on new urgency as NATO bolsters its defenses amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Air Force did not answer Tuesday whether it plans to pause operations to inspect ejection seats across its fleet of nearly 450 T-6 planes, a move that could further slow graduations in the service’s already-struggling pilot training enterprise.

The two-seat, turboprop Texan IIs are used to teach basic flying skills to new Air Force and Navy pilots before they progress to more advanced airframes.

“The interim investigation board is in direct contact with 19th Air Force and [Air Education and Training Command] leadership,” Woodward said. “Any decisions regarding fleet-wide operations will be made by the AETC commander.”

This week’s fatality comes almost two years after the military grounded hundreds of training aircraft and other airframes amid concerns that their ejection seats would not fire correctly when needed.

Martin-Baker — which builds the ejection seats used on the T-6, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and more — had discovered defects in some of the cartridges that explode to propel an aviator out of the cockpit.

It’s unclear whether the latest accident is related to those troubles. Martin-Baker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Major accidents in the T-6 are rare; this week’s fatality marks the Air Force’s first death in a Texan II since 2004, according to the Air Force Safety Center. The most recent accident that destroyed an Air Force T-6 occurred in 2019.

The pilot is the ninth airman killed in an aviation-related mishap so far in fiscal year 2024.

This story was updated May 15 at 10:50 a.m. ET to clarify that the fatality is the Air Force’s first death in a T-6 since 2004.

Base spokesman Rob Smith said Kirtland supports citizens’ rights to peacefully assemble and protest and that base security would monitor the situation throughout the day. Meanwhile, the gate would remain closed indefinitely and people who work on the base were advised to use other routes.

The protest comes just days after 16 people — including five students — were arrested at the University of New Mexico just a few miles away after they occupied the campus’ student union building and caused damage inside.

Kirtland, a base of around 22,000 employees in Albuquerque, is home to a range of air and space research-and-development programs, special operations units and the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, which manages acquisition and sustainment of the service’s nuclear enterprise.

Thursday’s protest is the latest demonstration to target a U.S. military installation since Hamas militants attacked Israel in October, killing around 1,200 people and abducting around 250 hostages. Israel’s retaliatory invasion has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians as of the end of April, according to Gaza health officials.

In March, five protesters were arrested for blocking an entrance to Travis AFB, California, in opposition to America’s materiel support for the Israeli military. In November, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters in Turkey tried to storm Incirlik Air Base, which houses U.S. troops, ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Ankara for talks on Gaza.

Opposition to the war has come from within the U.S. Air Force as well.

Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old cyber defense operations specialist, died in February after setting himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington while declaring that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide.” Bushnell walked up to the embassy shortly before 1 p.m. on Feb. 25 and livestreamed his self-immolation on the video streaming platform Twitch, The Associated Press reported at the time.

Bushnell’s death has prompted at least one other airman — Senior Airman Larry Hebert, an integrated avionics journeyman — to publicly protest the war. Hebert began a hunger strike April 1.

He told Military.com he planned to consume only water and a juice supplement “until my body cannot go any longer or we get the cease-fire and the end of unconditional aid to Israel.”

The Air Force has charged Teixeira, an airman 1st class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, with one count of disobeying a lawful order and two counts of obstructing justice under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a service spokesperson said Wednesday.

The service alleges Teixeira, 22, accessed a trove of U.S. military secrets unrelated to his job as an information technology specialist on military communications networks, then tried to dispose of evidence as criminal proceedings loomed.

Teixeira was convicted in federal court earlier this year of illegally collecting highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security matters, then leaking them on the social media platform Discord over the course of several months. He pleaded guilty to all six charges against him and agreed to a 16-year prison sentence.

On Wednesday, the Air Force said it has opted to prosecute Teixeira for “alleged misconduct related to his military duties” because the airman was on Title 10 active duty orders — meaning he was tasked to a federal mission rather than one run by the state — at the time of the purported crimes.

The service argues Teixeira disobeyed orders to stop looking at military documents outside his purview on multiple occasions between September 2022 and April 2023, according to a redacted charge sheet obtained by Air Force Times on Wednesday.

The Discord leaks revealed secret assessments of troop movements in Ukraine and the flow of supplies and equipment to Ukrainian troops, among other Pentagon secrets. Members of Teixeira’s Discord group have described the airman as someone “looking to show off,” rather than to become a whistleblower.

An Air Force probe found that Teixeira’s superiors repeatedly told him to stop seeking out classified intelligence but failed to report the breaches to the proper security officials or ensure he had destroyed his notes. The service has disciplined 15 people in connection with the leak.

The Air Force also alleges Teixeira disposed of an iPad, computer hard drive and cell phone, as well as deleted Discord messages, in the weeks leading up to his arrest on April 13, 2023. Prosecutors at Teixeira’s civilian trial said authorities had found a smashed tablet, laptop and Xbox gaming console in a dumpster at his house, the Associated Press reported in March.

An officer will review the new charges at a preliminary hearing on May 14 at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts, to determine whether there is enough evidence to begin a special court-martial.

If Teixeira is also convicted by a military judge or jury of violating Articles 92 and 131b of the UCMJ, he faces up to a year in prison, forfeiture of pay and a bad-conduct discharge. The Air Force may also demote him to a lower enlisted rank.

Michael Bachrach, Teixeira’s attorney, told the Associated Press in March that the airman was “significantly remorseful.”

“He has accepted full responsibility for his conduct,” Bachrach said.

Teixeira remains in the Air National Guard in an unpaid status, the Air Force said in March. He has been jailed since his arrest.

This story was updated to reflect how long Teixeira can be imprisoned if convicted at a special court-martial. He may face up to a year behind bars.