The Warrant Officer Training School will enroll 78 airmen, according to an Air Force press release, and classes will begin in October at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.

The warrant officer rank was reintroduced on June 28, when the school opened.

The Air Force stopped enlisting warrant officers in 1958 after creating the senior master sergeant and chief master sergeant ranks.

“These airmen are poised to assume critical roles as technical experts, functional leaders, and advisors within their specialized domains,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in the release. “They possess the cutting-edge skills we need to address the multifaceted challenges of today’s dynamic security landscape.”

When the Air Force first announced the creation of the Warrant Officer Corps, senior leaders said they would cap the number of students at 60, enrolling two classes of 30 airmen in the program.

But the Air Force announced on July 29 that it had enrolled 78 airmen.

The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The officers in training will be divided into three classes, with the first wave of graduated warrant officers slated to arrive at their Air Force duty stations in early 2025.

The Warrant Officer Corps resulted from a need to address critical operational needs, according to a June 28 Air Force press release.

“The warrant officer will serve on the virtual frontlines, allowing us to stay ahead of rapidly advancing threats while safeguarding national security interests in both the information technology and cyber career fields,” Brig. Gen. Houston R. Cantwell, commander of the Jeanne M. Holm Center for Officer Accessions and Citizen Development, said in the release.

The school will train cyber and information technology warrant officers during an 8-week course, and will focus on five major tenets: communicate, advise, influence, innovate, and integrate.

“We are using all tools available to ensure we keep our competitive advantage and expand our force’s capabilities in the cyber domain,” Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David Flosi said in a release.

Bellevue police responded Thursday to a report of a military-grade rocket in the garage of a home in the city across Lake Washington from Seattle. Police said an Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio, had called Wednesday evening to report an offer to donate the item, which a neighbor said had been purchased at an estate sale.

Bomb squad members inspected the rusting object and found it was a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead. There was no warhead attached and there was no rocket fuel — “essentially meaning that the item was an artifact with no explosive hazard.”

“Because the item was inert and the military did not request it back, police left the item with the neighbor to be restored for display in a museum,” police said.

According to the Air Force Armament Museum Foundation, the unguided air-to-air rocket was used by the U.S. and Canada during a period of the Cold War when interception of Soviet strategic bombers was a major military concern. In July 1957, a Genie was launched at 18,000 feet (about 5,500 meters) from an F89J interceptor and detonated over Yucca Flats, Nevada, the first and only test detonation of a U.S. nuclear-tipped air-to-air rocket.

“And we think it’s gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again,” police said on Twitter, adding a rocket emoji.

These are just some of the past toxic risks that were in the underground capsules and silos where Air Force nuclear missile crews have worked since the 1960s. Now many of those service members have cancer.

The toxic dangers were recorded in hundreds of pages of documents dating back to the 1980s that were obtained by The Associated Press through Freedom of Information Act requests. They tell a far different story from what Air Force leadership told the nuclear missile community decades ago, when the first reports of cancer among service members began to surface:

“The workplace is free of health hazards,” a Dec. 30, 2001, Air Force investigation found.

“Sometimes, illnesses tend to occur by chance alone,” a follow-up 2005 Air Force review found.

The capsules are again under scrutiny.

The AP reported in January that at least nine current or former nuclear missile officers, or missileers, had been diagnosed with the blood cancer non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Then hundreds more came forward self-reporting cancer diagnoses. In response the Air Force launched its most sweeping review to date and tested thousands of air, water, soil and surface samples in all of the facilities where the service members worked. Four current samples have come back with unsafe levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a known carcinogen used in electrical wiring.

In early 2024, more data is expected, and the Air Force is working on an official count of how many current or former missile community service members have cancer.

Some current missileers told the AP they were concerned by the new reports but believe the Air Force is being transparent in its current search for toxic dangers. Many of them take some of the same precautions missileers have for generations, such as having “capsule clothes,” the civilian attire they change into once inside the capsule to work the 24-hour shift. The clothes go straight into the laundry after a shift because they end up smelling metallic.

“Whenever you hear ‘cancer’ it’s a little concerning,” said Lt. Joy Hawkins, 23, a missileer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. To Hawkins and fellow missileer Lt. Samantha McGlinchey, who spoke to a visiting AP reporter as they completed an underground shift at launch control capsule Charlie, the news meant they would need to be diligent about medical checkups. “There’s more testing, things to come, cleanup efforts,” McGlinchey, 28, said. “For us early in our careers, it’s better to be caught so early.”

Others worry the dangers will again be played down.

When the latest rounds of test results were released, the Air Force did not initially reveal that samples showing contamination had critically higher PCB levels than EPA standards allow — and dozens of other areas tested were just below the EPA’s threshold, said Steven Mayne, a former senior enlisted nuclear missile facility supervisor at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota who now runs a Facebook group that is dedicated to posting Air Force news or internal memos.

“At this point the EPA, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and senators from North Dakota and Montana need to look into this matter,” Mayne said.

In December 2022, former Malmstrom missileers Jackie Perdue and Monte Watts, both of whom have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate.

“I believe health and safety standards have been violated, or not considered, and should be investigated,” said Perdue, who served as a nuclear missile combat crew commander at Malmstrom from 1999 to 2006, in an inspector general complaint obtained by the AP.

Past exposures

There are currently three nuclear missile bases in the United States: F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Minot and Malmstrom. Each base has 15 underground launch control capsules that act as hubs for fields of 10 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos each. The capsules are manned around the clock, 365 days a year. Missileers spend 24 hours or more each shift working underground in those capsules monitoring the ICBMs, ready to launch them if directed by the president.

The Air Force acknowledges the current review can’t provide full answers on what past missileers were exposed to, but the data will establish a health profile likely to help them apply for veterans benefits.

However, there are plenty of warning signs about past toxic risks in the documents obtained by AP.

“Type and content of asbestos, please phone ASAP,” a handwritten note reads on memo dated Nov. 9, 1992. All of the documents obtained by the AP have been redacted to have the names blocked out, but the urgency was evident. “PRIORITY,” the handwritten note says, in all caps.

An environmental team at Malmstrom capsules Hotel and Juliet got worrisome asbestos readings from underneath a generator in the capsule equipment rooms. The equipment room is also underground, contained within the same, sealed-in workspace. The EPA’s threshold for asbestos exposure is 1% for an eight-hour workday. But missileers were locked in there for 24 hours at a time, at least. If the weather was bad and the replacement crew couldn’t make the drive to the site, a team could be stuck underground for as long as 72 hours. Hotel and Juliet recorded solid samples of chrysotile asbestos — a white asbestos that can be inhaled — between 15% to 30%.

In the official report published just seven days later, however, the risks were downplayed.

“Asbestos presents a health hazard only when it is crushed (able to be crushed or pulverized by hand pressure.) All suspect (asbestos) was found to be in good condition,” the annual review on Hotel said.

At missile silo Quebec-12 in 1989 it found levels of up to 50% amosite asbestos, a brown asbestos found in cement and insulation. And a team looking at Malmstrom’s Bravo capsule that same year had warned that even if it was left undisturbed, it could be dangerous. “Diesel room — when running leaks asbestos,” it warned.

In his inspector general complaint, former Malmstrom missileer Watts said there was asbestos in the floor tile as well, and that missileers also “routinely removed, handled and replaced these tiles as part of required survival equipment inventories.”

The documents also reveal multiple PCB spills throughout the decades. A 1987 report talks about a missileer calling his commander to report a severe headache and lightheadedness. The crew finds a clear, sticky syrup leaking under the capsule’s power panel. “I suggested the blast door be opened for more ventilation and no contact with the substance be made,” a bioenvironmental engineer documents. “All the team needed to do was open the blast door and stay away from the spill. There was no need to close the capsule.”

“It’s frustrating to know they had thought of this back then,” said Doreen Jenness, whose husband, Jason Jenness, was a Malmstrom missileer who died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2001 at the age of 31. “It makes me frustrated and angry that they can keep telling these young men and women that they are not finding anything — knowing that back in 2001, 2003 and the early 2000s that there was something going on there.”

Capsule Sierra

Doreen and Jason Jenness met while he was assigned to Malmstrom. They married and lived on base in the mid-1990s. Their missileer friends used to tease them because they had a golden Labrador named Sierra, the same name as one of the capsules that Jason’s squadron operated.

The environmental reports from Malmstrom when Jason was assigned there show Sierra had a long list of hazards. In 1996, a medical team reported there were more than 25 gallons of fluid overrun with biological growth festering on Sierra’s capsule floor. An intake that collected outside air for Sierra was located by the parking lot, and the team watched a running car idle near it for 20 minutes. The team documented that a fan needed to pull clean air down into Sierra had been broken for at least six months, so the only way crews could get fresh air was if they left the capsule’s steel vault door open.

At the other capsules, the team said the air quality was “marginal, but should not cause serious health problems.” Sierra was dangerous. In March of 1996, the medical team measured carbon dioxide levels of 1,700 parts per million in the air. “At these levels you can expect complaints of headache, drowsiness, fatigue and/or difficulty concentrating from a majority of the occupants. Worker removal should be considered.”

Nothing changed. That May the medical team again recorded exposure levels of 1,800 ppm, and advised again that the missileers should be removed.

Leaking computer consoles

By the mid-1990s a new missile targeting system was needed, and each capsule began a refurbishment to install a wall-sized computer console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting System. The new system would allow the U.S. more quickly to reprogram and retarget its nuclear missiles in case of war. Demolition of the old computer and construction of REACT began inside each of the 15 Malmstrom capsules.

Missileers wonder if the REACT refurbishment further disturbed asbestos and PCBs that were still in the capsules. But once installed, the new console also exposed missileers to a new toxic danger.

“Crew members reported a malfunctioning video display characterized by a clicking sound,” a report on a May 1995 incident at Malmstrom’s Bravo capsule said. “After the click, the video display shut down with only a white line visible to crew members.”

A clear liquid began to leak, followed by a fishy, ammonia-like smell. The crew began to complain of headaches and nausea, and the capsule was evacuated two hours later.

Malmstrom’s team learned that the liquid was dimethylformamide, an electrolyte used in REACT’s video display unit capacitors, because F.E. Warren, the Wyoming base, had recently reported similar leaks.

“The capacitors overheat and vent into the capsule in lieu of catastrophic failure,” a 1996 memo found after a second dimethylformamide leak at Bravo. “To date, we have no idea how much of this material is contained in the capsules nor do we have any idea of the relative hazard to missile crews and maintenance personnel who come in contact with this material.”

Medical studies on dimethylformamide’s link to cancer are split; some report a clear tie to liver cancer, others say more study is needed.

Changes coming

All of the capsules will be closed down in a few years, as the military’s new ICBM, the Sentinel, comes online. As part of the modernization, the old capsules will be demolished. A new, modern underground control center will be built on top of them. Air Force teams working on the new designs are aware of the cancer reports and are applying modern environmental health standards in the new centers — requirements that did not exist when the Minuteman capsules were first built, said Maj. Gen. John Newberry, commander of the Air Force’s nuclear weapons center.

“We are absolutely learning from or understanding what’s going on with Minuteman III, and if there’s something that we need to look at from a Sentinel side,” Newberry said.

The old capsules will remain in use until then, though, which makes it even more important that the Air Force is completely open with its missileers now, Doreen Jenness said.

Because they were so young, neither she nor Jason suspected cancer when he started to feel fatigued in the fall of 2000. Nor when his hip started to ache that December.

When he finally gave in and saw a doctor in February 2001, he was admitted to the hospital the same day. By March, Jason and Doreen knew his lymphoma was untreatable. He died that July.

“We can all pretend to not know, because knowing is really hard,” Doreen Jenness said. “Knowing and doing something about it is even harder. Now, 23 years after Jason’s been gone there’s a whole bunch of young men and women that are having to go through the same things that we had to go through. They have to live the same lives and maybe have the same future as me, and it’s just sad. Really sad.”

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to show the documents recorded toxic dangers, not toxins.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is set to return to the skies of Pasadena, California, on New Year’s Day for the Tournament of Roses after a brief hiatus from the annual flight.

The B-2 flyover will kick off the Rose Bowl football game on Jan. 1, 2024, between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Michigan Wolverines, continuing its tradition with the Tournament of Roses Foundation, according to a statement from the Air Force 509th Bomb Wing.

“We are excited to return to the 2024 Rose Bowl,” Col. Keith J. Butler, 509th Bomb Wing commander at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, home of the B-2 Spirit, said in the release.

The stealth bomber’s reappearance comes after its absence from the sunny skies of California earlier this year, when a pair of B-1B Lancers from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, instead flew over the events.

That flyover followed an incident in December 2022 at Whiteman Air Force Base, when a B-2 malfunctioned in flight and made an emergency landing, causing the entire nuclear bomber fleet to stand down for a safety check. That eventually ended in May after months of safety inspections.

A B-2 bomber task force deployed to Iceland over the summer, marking a return to routine operational rotations after the mishap late last year.

In case one missed a glimpse of Santa Claus gliding through the air earlier this week, be sure to catch the B-2 in action as it delivers a last dose of festive spirit for everyone — even to those who were naughty.

The Raider flew in Palmdale, California, where it has been under testing and development by Northrop Grumman.

The Air Force is planning to build 100 of the warplanes, which have a flying wing shape much like their predecessor the B-2 Spirit but will incorporate advanced materials, propulsion and stealth technology to make them more survivable in a future conflict. The plane is planned to be produced in variants with and without pilots.

“The B-21 Raider is in flight testing,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said.

Such testing is a critical step in the campaign to provide “survivable, long-range, penetrating strike capabilities to deter aggression and strategic attacks against the United States, allies, and partners,” Stefanek said.

The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years, and almost every aspect of the program is classified. Both Northrop Grumman and the Air Force have tried to protect the program’s details to prevent China from gaining access to the weapon’s technology and building a similar version, as it has with other U.S. advanced weapons systems like the F-35 joint strike fighter.

The B-21 is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it invests in new weapons to meet China’s rapid military modernization.

Northrop Grumman Corp. is based in Falls Church, Virginia.

Col. Kirt Cassell, the Air Force’s T-7 program manager, told Defense News on Friday that the service’s first four T-7 test pilots are days away from beginning their familiarization and training flights at Boeing’s facility in St. Louis, Missouri.

Those Air Force pilots’ flights will pave the way for this first T-7, which Boeing officially delivered to the Air Force in mid-September, to travel to Edwards in a series of ferrying flights possibly next week, he said.

These are experienced pilots with thousands of flight hours each, he added, and would likely just need about two flights before becoming qualified.

“They’re trained to be able to fly pretty much any aircraft you put them in, but you still need to get them qualified in that aircraft,” Cassell said. “That usually takes a handful of sorties.”

The T-7 will be the Air Force’s next jet aircraft for training new pilots. It’s designed to emulate a fifth-generation fighter such as the F-22 and F-35. The Air Force plans to buy 351 Red Hawks to replace its 504 aging T-38 Talon trainers.

But the program is years behind schedule due to problems such as a potentially dangerous escape system and faulty flight control software. The T-7 was originally scheduled to reach initial operational capability in 2024, but that has now slipped to spring 2027.

Boeing officials have continued preoperational maintenance and other support for the T-7 since the Air Force accepted the first one. Boeing said in an email to Defense News that ground testing of the jet’s latest software is complete and that the company’s own flight testing is about to begin.

Cassell said Boeing pilots are scheduled to fly the T-7 on Oct. 20.

The Air Force and Boeing are also going through testing processes to ensure no surprises pop up during the ferrying flights.

Cassell said that the T-7, as a new aircraft, has “run into a couple [of] growing pains” that the service and Boeing are working through. For example, he said, a leaking aileron was discovered on the T-7 and needed to be replaced.

But Cassell described such nonconformance problems as standard for a new program. Although the late-October delivery of the T-7 to Edwards is slightly behind the Air Force’s expectation earlier this year that it would happen in September, Cassell said he is comfortable with the program’s pace.

“It’s the cost of doing business when you put together a new aircraft,” he said. “We’re stretching its legs, trying to get it out there and flying. … There’s a steep learning curve.”

The ferrying flights will likely take two or three days, he said, and involve three or four stops along the way. Those stops will give the pilots a chance to rest and for a support crew to refuel the T-7 as well as check out how well it’s performing.

A Boeing Challenger business jet, which will also carry spare parts, maintainers, and other support crew and pilots, will shadow the T-7. The ferrying pilots will include Air Force pilots from Edwards’ 416th Flight Test Squadron, which will receive qualification on the jet next week, and Boeing test pilots.

“It’s an extensive effort” to prepare this first T-7 for the roughly 1,800-mile flight to Edwards, Cassell said.

“It hasn’t been flown a lot,” he added. “We haven’t tested its navigation system yet. So you need to have an aircraft with a known, tested, fielded navigation system [chase the T-7] so the two aircraft can safely get across the country.”

Cassell said the Oct. 26 goal for the ferry flights to begin will depend on weather conditions. Thunderstorms or low, heavy clouds could prompt the Air Force to delay takeoff and wait for clearer skies.

Boeing has also worked at Edwards to prepare for the first T-7′s arrival, Cassell said, such as by delivering and setting up a simulator and other activities to get ready for flight tests. Both Boeing and Air Force test pilots will fly the T-7 once it gets to Edwards.

Cassell said the Air Force is also continuing to test fixes to the T-7′s problematic escape system and flight control software, which earlier this year caused the program to be re-baselined and fall further behind schedule.

Tests of the T-7′s escape system in 2021 found it could be dangerous and cause concussions or other injuries to ejecting pilots. The Air Force and Boeing worked to redesign it.

In the next two or three weeks, Cassell said, the Air Force plans to test the escape system’s redesigned drogue chute at an on-the-ground testing site in Utah run by Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of RTX. And work is underway to model how the T-7′s canopy fractures to allow a pilot to eject through it.

The remaining tests should tell the Air Force and Boeing how else the escape system’s design needs tweaked, he said, and those changes will undergo testing on the ground in January or February.

The T-7 that will soon fly to Edwards has received new and updated flight control software, Cassell noted. Those flight controls are still being refined, he said, but the test aircraft have all the changes needed to start flight testing.

More Red Hawks on the way

The Air Force is also preparing for the delivery of the next four T-7s in the coming months.

Boeing is expected to deliver the Air Force’s second T-7 around the first week of November, Cassell said, and it will be flown to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida for testing in the base’s McKinley Climatic Laboratory in mid- to late November. An F-15 or F-16 from Eglin’s 40th Flight Test Squadron will likely “chase” this T-7 on its trip.

The climate testing is designed to emulate various temperatures and weather scenarios to make sure the T-7 can operate safely in a variety of conditions. At one point, the lab will subject the T-7 to cold soaking, where the jet is immersed in frigid temperatures and then operated. Another test is called solar loading, where lights replicating the effect of long exposures to bright Texas sun on a flight line are shone on the T-7 to ensure it runs as intended.

Once that T-7′s climate testing is done in January 2024, Cassell said, it will probably fly back to St. Louis for more flight tests, and later out to Edwards for a short period of mission systems testing.

The third T-7 is also on its way and is expected to fly to Edwards around the end of November, after Thanksgiving, he added.

The fourth and fifth T-7s are still on track for delivery by the end of December. Those jets will stay at the St. Louis facility for the immediate future, where the Air Force will conduct technical order certification and verification. That is a detailed process in which Air Force and Boeing maintainers go over the T-7′s manuals to ensure that, for example, the procedure for changing a battery in the plane is exactly how it is described in writing.

“It could [find problems] as simple as: ‘It says remove 10 screws … but there’s only nine screws,’ ” Cassell said. “It’s labor intensive, but it’s very important to make sure that we’re doing appropriate sustainment and maintenance on the aircraft.”

The U.S. Air Force is transitioning most of its aging Guard and Reserve C-130Hs to a new, almost-entirely-digital avionics and navigation system that it hopes will dramatically simplify how aircrews fly them, the service said Tuesday.

The new system, dubbed Avionics Modernization Program Increment 2, will update the C-130′s cockpit with six interconnected digital displays. These large glass multifunctional displays will replace all but three of the old analog gauges, which date back to the C-130′s nearly 60-year-old original design, and bring the older C-130Hs in line with the newer C-130J’s capabilities.

“This is much larger than just a software or hardware upgrade,” said Maj. Jacob Duede, an experimental test pilot for the 417th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base. “It’s reconstructing and modernizing the aircraft’s entire cockpit area.”

The Air Force has about 118 C-130Hs total in its Guard and Reserve fleets, most of which are more than 30 years old. The service is replacing them with newer C-130Js, which active duty mobility units fly, but amid that yearslong effort, the service needs to upgrade its C-130Hs to keep them up to date.

The Air Force said the cockpits of more than 23 Reserve and 54 Guard C-130s will receive upgrades over the next five years, with each modification costing about $7 million.

The 417th Flight Test Squadron, part of the 96th Test Wing, began developmental testing of the new avionics system on the first C-130H to receive the upgrade in August, the service said. More Hercules will start receiving upgrades this month.

Developmental testing, which began in 2021, will continue at Eglin Air Force Base through December. The aircraft will then move to Little Rock, Arkansas, for the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center to start operational testing.

The cockpit upgrade also brings with it a new flight management system, autopilot, an updated global positioning system, a digital engine instrument, and a terrain and warning system, the Air Force said.

It will spell the end of a painfully cumbersome navigation process Guard and Reserve C-130 pilots have operated under for years, Duede said — one that required aircrews to bring tablets or laptops onboard to pull up the necessary navigational software.

“Aircrew essentially had to print the directions before flying and then type the information in using latitude and longitude, or use ground-based navigation aids,” Duede said. “This new mod is the newest GPS navigation with a by-name search function and autopilot, all built into the aircraft.”

The new system will also make it easier for aircrews to modify their flight plans midair, the service said. Under the old system, pilots had to coordinate with air traffic control to change their flight plan and then look up the new latitude and longitude on a tablet or laptop. The pilots would then enter those coordinates into the aircraft’s system. This could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on the proficiency of the crew, Duede said — “either of which is a long time when in the air moving at 4 miles per minute.”

The Air Force said the new displays, with their built-in navigational software, would allow the pilot to change the flight plan by hand in less than 30 seconds.

The new integrated terrain awareness and warning system is a version of the ground- and object-avoidance program used in commercial aircraft, but upgraded with Air Force tactical flying requirements. To test that warning system, the service said, aircrews sometimes fly toward the ground or at obstacles to ensure it works as quickly and clearly as intended.

The aircrew study all parts of the new avionics system during developmental flight tests so the service can tell the manufacturer if anything needs changed.

“This is an entirely new system,” Caleb Reeves, a test engineer with the 417th Flight Test Squadron, said in the service announcement. “Everything we’re testing here is being done for the first time ever in this aircraft.”

If their vision comes true, the Air Force would enter the 2030s as a smaller but more flexible force that is better positioned to win America’s wars, with sharper leaders and savvier airmen.

Just give it time.

“You’re going to see more change in the next four to six years than I’ve seen in my entire over-30-year career,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass told Air Force Times Aug. 28.

Facing its first period of relative stability since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks kicked off more than 20 years of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the Air Force is seizing the opportunity to overhaul everything from how it trains and promotes its members, to the jobs they hold and how they deploy overseas.

Those updates come amid a historic downturn in recruiting, which saw the Air Force miss its annual goal across all three components for the first time since 1999, and growing concerns that China’s bid to outpace America as a global superpower could lead to war.

“We want China to succeed, but to succeed by working within the rules that benefit all nations, including China,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a Sept. 11 keynote address at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington.

“If our power projection capability and capacity are not adequate to deter Chinese aggression, against Taiwan or elsewhere, war could occur,” he said. “If it does, and we cannot prevail, the results could cast a long shadow.”

Restructuring the force

Understanding the big picture starts with numbers.

After plunging to around 311,000 active duty troops in 2015, the Air Force has rebuilt its workforce to hover around 325,000 members — far below its Cold War peak of around 608,000 airmen in 1986.

Service leaders say that’s enough to handle today’s largely peacetime mission. But fighting another country whose military capabilities rival that of the U.S. will require something better.

“We are … asked to do a mission [that] we are not able to, based on our workforce,” Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, the Air Force’s personnel chief, told Air Force Times Sept. 8.

But neither Miller nor Bass said they buy the argument that the Air Force doesn’t have enough people. Instead, they said, the service needs to use its manpower differently.

“I’m not convinced that we don’t have enough airmen,” Bass said. “We need to make sure that we’re focused on what the Air Force needs to look like and [if] we have the programs in place to … win our nation’s wars.”

Last year, the Air Force began an intensive effort to undo its top-heavy enlisted corps that it believes lacks enough experience in middle management and has too few lower-level troops for daily grunt work.

Ideally, the Air Force says, the project will create a robust corps of midlevel enlisted to manage a larger pool of younger airmen. If the plan works, half of the enlisted Air Force will occupy the ranks of E-4 or below.

In its first year, the effort has shrunk the number of master sergeant and technical sergeant jobs by 0.5% each, and 0.6% of staff sergeant jobs — shedding several hundred of those billets in total, according to figures provided to Air Force Times. Conversely, the E-4 corps grew by 2.2%, or about 1,300 senior airmen.

Master Sgt. Deana Heitzman, an Air Force spokesperson, said that because of higher than expected retention, the service ended up with more noncommissioned officers — staff sergeants and technical sergeants — than planned in 2023, despite plummeting promotion rates to those grades.

The service still needs to cut 0.2% of its senior airman jobs; 1.4% of its staff sergeant jobs; and 1.5% of its technical sergeant jobs, to meet its goals in fiscal 2025.

“The Air Force has continued to make progress towards the desired grade structure and restoring noncommissioned officer experience,” Heitzman said Aug. 30. “The Air Force continues to advance toward the FY25 target.”

On the officer side, tailoring the promotion system to be more responsive to the needs of each career field has helped higher-caliber airmen stand out from their peers and started to even out manning across fields, Miller argued.

How airmen are judged for promotions is changing, too. The Air Force has begun emphasizing interpersonal skills and technical expertise and stopped considering how long someone has been in the service, among other tweaks to the software they use and when they file job reviews each year.

Leaders want to know: “Can you communicate? Can you set a strategic plan? Can you make sure that your airmen are ready?” Miller said.

“Previously, it was whatever you wanted to say,” she said of performance reviews. “‘You did great at the chili cookoff,’ or whatever. It did not matter.”

Now it should be easier for supervisors to see if an airman is lacking a particular skill, or missing crucial job experience.

“We can have a much more robust conversation based on what we value,” Miller said.

Time will tell whether well-rounded airmen begin moving up the ladder more often.

But the transition has not been easy. Some enlisted airmen have taken to social media to grumble about failing to meet a higher bar for promotion, despite studying for the battery of tests on which midlevel troops are judged and compiling what they believe are impressive resumes and performance reviews.

Some said they’ll consider separating from the Air Force instead of being stuck at lower ranks. Others encouraged their wingmen to stick it out and focus on personal goals, whether they earn another stripe or not.

One Reddit user argued that low promotion rates demoralize airmen who are passed over despite a “promote now” or “must promote” recommendation from their supervisors.

“You end up with dudes with ‘promote now’ and years of solid service being told ‘you still are not good enough,’” user FlyingThrowAway2009 wrote in August 2022. “It is straight up insulting.”

Bass urged airmen to consider the broader needs of the service and their field instead of making rank.

“More experience is a good thing,” Bass said. “I think that we will see the fruits of our labor as time goes on.”

The next generation

The military’s recent recruiting slump further complicates that process. Billets that move to the lowest enlisted ranks can sit empty without a steady flow of airmen through boot camp and technical school.

About 39,000 new enlistees joined the Air Force in fiscal 2023. More than 3,800 of them came in under a program that offers thousands of dollars in bonus pay for entering the service’s most in-need fields, like special warfare and cyber operations, Heitzman said.

Recruiters will try to improve on that performance as they drive toward a loftier goal of 25,900 active duty recruits in fiscal 2024.

It’s unclear how the service’s failure to bring nearly 48,000 enlisted airmen into the active duty Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve this year will affect operations at home and abroad.

Missing the goal this year is likely to stress communities that are already chronically undermanned and may hinder some of the Air Force’s broader force management initiatives.

Bass indicated it will place further burden on noncommissioned officers to pick up the slack of a smaller cadre of newcomers — something else to juggle amid the other effects of enlisted force restructuring.

“We are … looking for what impacts we’re going to have and how to lessen that impact at the most tactical level,” Bass said. “What it’s going to mean is that our NCO corps shoulders the challenges.”

Air Force Recruiting Service leaders warned in April that lagging recruitment would exacerbate a shortfall of 1,800 maintainers, 700 security forces, 300 munitions specialists, 100 fuel experts and more.

“Airmen will almost certainly be asked to work longer hours, cover more shifts and make sacrifices in their personal lives to meet the mission demands essential to our national security,” Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, who retired in June as the service’s recruiting chief, wrote to the force. “The nation is depending on us.”

Get in, stay in

Once Americans join the Air Force, it’s up to the military keep them.

The Air Force retained about 93% of its officers and 90% of enlisted airmen in fiscal 2023, Heitzman said. Those numbers are on par with retention rates over the past several years.

That’s a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy personnel outlook, leaders said: When people join the Air Force, they tend to stay.

The service is trying to ward off any sharp dips in those numbers by offering bonuses to stay in uniform and multiple programs to improve airmen’s quality of life.

Around 900 airmen have opted to reenlist since April under the latest enlisted retention bonus program, Heitzman said.

More than 870 aviators have signed new contracts to extend their time in service under a pair of programs created to keep pilots in uniform. Nearly 7 in 10 officers who are in their last year of the time they promised the Air Force after finishing flight school have opted to stay longer.

Gen. David Allvin, the Air Force’s current vice chief of staff who is nominated to lead the service, told lawmakers Sept. 12 the service has issued waivers to allow enlisted airmen to remain in uniform past their “high year of tenure,” or the year they must retire if they are not promoted to the next rank.

The Air Force has also asked outside researchers to identify other ways to retain airmen. Service leaders acknowledge that tackling tough problems, like ensuring that troops have sufficient pay, health care, child care and food, are part of that solution.

Katherine Kuzminski, a military personnel expert at the Center for a New American Security, raised the possibility that a now-resolved funding snafu, which caused the Air Force to pause airmen’s moves to new bases and bonus pay programs, could have a chilling effect on retention.

The service must offer airmen and their families stability through “effective forecasting and the predictable and consistent application of policy and process,” especially in stressful situations like moving, she said in an email.

Keeping people in uniform is one step toward making the military’s workload more bearable. Another is ensuring that people are effectively distributed across those jobs, whether at the national or local level.

Speaking to reporters Sept. 12, Air Force Reserve boss Lt. Gen. John Healy recalled a recent town hall where airmen complained about their growing list of duties.

That typically happens in units that have a glut of people in certain roles but too few in others, he said. But it’s a problem he can’t control.

“I was like, ‘You’re 113% manned right now. You have overages in the spots that you don’t need them,’” Healy said. “‘What do you want me to do? Balance the units.’”

‘Break the AFSC structure’

Now the service must make the most of the people it has.

Leaders see the mid- to late-2020s as a crossroads at which the Air Force needs to embrace the digital age or lose its future wars. On top of bolstering the NCO corps and training airmen to think strategically, that means taking a critical look at what tomorrow’s jobs entail.

Air Force officials are considering what the overall pool of jobs should look like, and how to distribute troops among them. Those talks come as the service plans to retire hundreds of its stalwart airframes, some without direct replacements, and repurpose airmen into new missions.

Other aircraft that are replacing older models, like the C-130J Super Hercules airlifters and EC-37B Compass Call, require fewer crew members onboard. What to do with those troops?

Bass argues the Air Force could stand to lose some specialties. She believes there are too many Air Force Specialty Codes overall, and too few in areas like information warfare and cyber operations.

The service should look decades into the future to decide what skills will be most important and start building those career fields now, she said.

Asked what success would look like, Bass said it’s too early to tell.

“The working groups that we have set up right now that incorporate some of our futurists, and the people who are thinking deeply about the mission sets and the weapon systems that we have, are all doing some of that homework,” she said.

Bass has also asked the Air Force’s career field managers to consider what their jobs might look like in 10 years — or if they’re still needed at all.

Miller suggested airmen could see the types of careers being offered begin to change in the next two to three years.

Assignments could become less specialized, she said, or require airmen to hold different certifications. The goal is to shrink the Air Force’s overseas footprint by packaging a smaller number of airmen with a greater set of skills into a deployed unit.

That’s part of a larger push to turn the Air Force into an organization that prioritizes support to combatant commanders around the world over staffing home bases.

“I don’t know where we’re going to end,” Miller said. “It may be that we completely break the AFSC structure.”

Airmen will also start to see new career opportunities within specialties as well.

The Air Force will test the possibility of splitting career fields into two tracks: one to build commanders of operational squadrons and one to build subject matter experts. The experiment will begin with cyber operations officers, or the “17D” field, Miller said.

It’s unclear how widely airmen will embrace the idea. In 2018, the service tried a similar approach with mobility pilots that offered airmen the chance to spend their career in the cockpit or to transition into leadership roles. Just two people applied for the “flying-only” track.

The Air Force hasn’t considered bringing back that program, Allvin told Congress in September.

Whether the service’s ambitious slate of reforms lead to the outcomes it wants remains to be seen. But officials say they’re already starting to see airmen more fully embrace the call to service — to deter enemies and fight when needed.

“I think we have a better sense of why we wear this uniform, and what we have to do to make sure that every single airman is prepared appropriately … to defend our nation,” Bass said. “The strategic IQ has absolutely increased … and that’s probably what I will be most proud of as the chief master sergeant of the Air Force.”

Beth Van Schaack, who serves as the U.S. Global Criminal Justice ambassador-at-large, testified Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on possible war crimes perpetrated by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

Van Schaack spent much of the session answering lawmakers’ questions about the Pentagon’s resistance to cooperating with the International Criminal Court.

Questioned by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) about whether the Pentagon was the agency keeping the rest of the federal government from reaching a consensus on ICC cooperation, Van Schaack referenced previous congressional testimony from Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin. Van Hollen countered, asserting that the query was “a yes or no answer.”

Van Schaack answered “yes,” acknowledging that the Pentagon has kept the rest of the federal government from reaching consensus over war crimes evidence sharing.

The ranking member of the committee, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), took aim at the Pentagon’s position against evidence sharing, saying no one from the Pentagon contacted lawmakers as they were writing the legislation to allow increased cooperation with the ICC.

“We’re not going to tolerate an agency saying, ‘Well, we don’t like that law, so we’re not going to enforce it,’” Risch said during the hearing. “When you’re dealing with the ICC, you’re always cognizant of the fact that there could be pitfalls, there could be a problem putting U.S. servicemen in jeopardy.

“We scrupulously avoided that and had specific language to see that didn’t happen,” he added.

The Pentagon did not respond to Military Times’ request for comment as of publication. The minority office of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also did not respond to a question from Military Times about what actions are being considered by lawmakers to force the Pentagon to provide evidence of war crimes to the ICC.

Pentagon officials reportedly fear doing so would create precedent for the court to charge U.S. citizens, which has stood as a redline for policymakers since the court’s inception.

When the ICC was founded in 1998, the U.S. fought to prevent the prosecution of any citizens in countries that were not party to the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the international court. The U.S. government lost that debate.

Since then, any person, regardless of citizenship, who is charged with a war crime in a country that has signed onto the ICC can be investigated and prosecuted by the court.

In 2001, Congress passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which restricted support for the ICC and prevented U.S. forces from taking part in peacekeeping missions.

Congress later amended the law, however, and eased restrictions in the fiscal year 2023 appropriations bill, which passed in December. Under the law, the U.S. government can aid the ICC with investigations and prosecutions “of foreign persons for crimes … related to the [s]ituation in Ukraine,” the legislation read.

“The legislation is very carefully crafted — it’s surgical in fact,” Van Schaack told lawmakers. “All the other protections of the American Servicemembers’ Act remain in place. … There are ways we can provide assistance without jeopardizing U.S. personnel.”

Adam Keith, the director of accountability at Human Rights First, supported lawmakers’ desire to help the ICC as it prosecutes Russian war crimes in the Ukraine conflict.

“It’s good that Congress is pressing the administration to support the ICC’s investigation of war crimes in Ukraine,” Keith told Military Times in an email. “It’s time for President Biden to finally push through the embarrassing impasse on this issue and put the U.S. government’s weight behind one of the main institutions providing justice for Russian war crimes.”

It’s been 20 years since black-and-green footage of Baghdad under attack flashed across television screens worldwide, broadcasting the explosive U.S.-led push to unseat Saddam Hussein and dismantle the Iraqi civil and military service.

The overwhelming show of strength represented the largest international military effort since World War II and the biggest U.S. operation since the Vietnam War. The air campaign relied on 1,800 aircraft — half of which belonged to the U.S. Air Force — and fired more than 500 cruise missiles in its first day. Airmen gained control of Iraqi airspace less than three weeks later, with limited American losses.

But could the United States do it again? Like most questions of military strategy: It depends.

Fighter technology has advanced; bombers have not. Their logistics chain has rusted as planes grow older and it becomes harder to supply spare parts. Cyber and drone warfare would be a cornerstone of any offensive, even as U.S. forces would face many of the same threats from an adversary. Battlefield tactics are increasingly complex and attuned to the digital age.

“It’s got a big asterisk,” said retired Air Force Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, who led the air campaign in Iraq before becoming the service’s chief of staff in 2005. “Philosophically, can you do it? Yeah. Are you prepared to do it? Yeah. Are you trained to do it? Yeah. But do you have the assets to do it and sustain it?”

What that may look like largely depends on the precipitating event, and where the invasion happens, current and former Air Force officials and defense experts told Air Force Times. Is there an advanced military on the other end? Was the groundwork laid ahead of time for a smoother takeover? How far would American jets and their weapons need to travel?

And, they said, what’s the long game?

“There’s a bunch of things the United States could do to quickly blind [an adversary],” said Peter Bergen, a vice president at the Washington-based New America think tank and co-director at Arizona State University’s Center on the Future of War. “Regime change is something that we seem to be able to do very quickly. … The question is, what comes next?”

From Iran to North Korea, any air campaign must make sense with the political and military objectives it hopes to achieve, Air Forces Central commander Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said.

In the precision-attack era, backed by savvier cyber operations, that may not require weeks or even months of nonstop bombing.

“When I have seen the term ‘shock and awe’ used, and people say that ‘shock and awe’ failed, I often find that what we’re really talking about is, ‘We tried to do something cheap and easy at the beginning with a limited amount of military force,’ rather than thinking about how we could apply pressure and lethal effects across the entire enemy system at once,” Grynkewich said.

Harlan Ullman, the military consultant credited with coining the term “shock and awe,” believes a true shock and awe campaign would rely much more on psychological warfare and diplomacy to keep adversaries in check and shape conditions in America’s favor. Those operations have dwindled in the decades since the Vietnam War as the Pentagon prioritized a more traditional approach to combat.

“Let them know from the beginning: They’re not going to survive the war. … We’re going to turn them into the Stone Age” without putting a single plane in enemy airspace, said Ullman, a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council.

‘Not a meat ax’

If the U.S. were to go to war first with its electronic attack planes and a strong disinformation campaign, followed by cyberattacks and standoff weapons, Ullman said it could prove more effective and efficient than dispatching legions of hardware and troops.

For instance: Shock and awe in the Pacific could look like a defense force capable of preventing China’s military from reaching Taiwan, without striking first, he said. If that force also threatens to cut off China’s access to air and sea shipping, Beijing could capitulate.

“We need to be able to use a scalpel and not a meat ax,” Ullman said. “We don’t, because our default position, ultimately, is always military force.”

What people tend to envision as shock and awe, though, comes after containment fails. Then it’s a race against the clock — and enemy forces — to gain control of enemy airspace.

“You’re going to have to figure out a way to campaign plan the usage of the existing F-22s and F-35s, and at some point you’re going to end up having to use F-16s and F-15Es and perhaps A-10s,” Moseley said. “But not on day one, not on day two. You’re going to have to damage that [integrated air defense] and damage that opposing force.”

Today’s surface-to-air missiles are much more lethal than those wielded by the Iraqis. They’re also harder — but possible — to take down, he said.

“There’s a million ways to go after an integrated air defense system,” such as the Russian-built S-300 or S-400 surface-to-air missiles teamed with other radars, anti-aircraft artillery and command nodes, Moseley said: Confuse them, or the people running them. Attack them kinetically or non-kinetically. Stress them. Target their command and control. Jam them.

That could require a more sophisticated approach than the bombing runs against surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery in Iraq.

Current Air Force officials envision a network of drones that would act as decoys and add frontline firepower without putting Americans in harm’s way. Those would be paired with more advanced electronic attack tools, long-range munitions and stealthy aircraft than existed in 2003, plus a more diverse array of intelligence-collection and communications nodes to maintain situational awareness.

“If we try to do shock and awe in a traditional sense of, ‘Oh, we’ll bomb a bunch of stuff and then wait,’ that sounds a little bit too ‘Rolling Thunder’ and not quite enough ‘Linebacker II’ to me,” Grynkewich said.

Operation Rolling Thunder was the three-year U.S. bombing campaign that tried to halt North Vietnam’s takeover of South Vietnam from 1965 to 1968; Operation Linebacker II came in 1972 to bring Hanoi to the table for peace talks.

Tactics that emerged in 2003 have continued to evolve as well, from the B-2 Spirit bomber’s combat debut to the first use of EC-130H Compass Call electronic attack planes for psychological warfare.

Airmen think more comprehensively about those options now, and are better at seeing a variety of solutions to a problem than they were 20 years ago, Grynkewich said.

Considering the full spectrum of military options has grown more important as America’s air arsenal ages. The average fighter jet is nearly 30 years old; the oldest tankers first deployed in the 1950s.

Its workforce is shrinking, too: The active duty Air Force now has about 51,000 fewer troops than it did in 2003; the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve have around 33,000 fewer troops in total.

Some experts worry those trends would weaken any U.S. attempt to gain control of enemy airspace and pummel them into submission.

“I believe we can do it. It’s just going to be harder because of the nature of the equipment that we’re forced to use,” Moseley said.

The Air Force’s stealthy F-117 Nighthawk fighter jets used during Operation Iraqi Freedom were replaced by the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II fighter jets after 2003. No new bombers have come online since OIF; the Air Force’s cargo, surveillance and refueling fleets are largely the same.

Future platforms like the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, E-7 Wedgetail aerial target tracking plane and a sixth-generation fighter remain years away. And going to war with older aircraft complicates maintenance and supply chain needs.

Moseley argues that, in lieu of a newly designed fighter, the Air Force needs more of the non-stealth F-22s in order to control enemy airspace. It would need a bomber fleet that can sustain airstrikes over longer periods of time. And it needs more KC-46 Pegasus tankers, now.

“The thing I worried about the most, the single-point failure for the entire campaign, to include air and ground campaign, was the tanker,” he said. “Do we have a new tanker in sufficient numbers, so that’s not a problem? … We don’t.”

Another potentially major point of failure: what Moseley believes is the U.S. military’s overdependence on satellite communications.

“If we can’t command and control forces, we don’t go blow stuff up,” he said. “Given the capabilities that we have seen with malware, cyber, [kinetic and non-kinetic attacks, and anti-satellite weapons], are we absolutely confident … that our command and control systems are intact and resilient? I suggest we’re not.”

The invasion of Iraq marked the first time the head of American airpower in the Middle East was put in charge of space operations. Now that’s the Space Force’s job.

Its new unit, U.S. Space Forces-Central, plans how to wield and protect space-related assets as part of an overall mission. That can help GPS, missile warning systems and other satellites and radars stay reliable when needed, and explore new ways to integrate them into offense and defense.

That expertise can come in handy especially as small drones continue to grow as a centerpiece of modern warfare. Those systems are also crucial to protecting overseas U.S. and coalition infrastructure that could be pelted with rockets or drones in retaliation.

One thing experts hope gets left in the early 2000s: the phrase “shock and awe” itself.

It’s too flippant for an act of war, misunderstood in its intent, carrying too much baggage 20 years later, they said.

“Frankly, I don’t care if they’re awed, I just care if they’re shocked,” Grynkewich said. “I care if I get the military outcomes that I’m looking at, from the perspective of having their … decision-making apparatus seize up, having their sustainment fall apart, and having them freeze in their place.”