The aircraft, a modified Bombardier business jet outfitted with Northrop Grumman’s Battlefield Airborne Communications Node payload, or BACN, is lesser known than the Air Force’s stalwart fleet of bombers, fighters and cargo jets. Now, with U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, the E-11 has taken on a new behind-the-scenes role supporting the multinational mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Since March, the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron, the only unit in the Air Force to fly the aircraft, has supported more than 30 of the service’s airdrops in Gaza while operating out of an undisclosed location in U.S. Central Command. Pilots with the squadron who spoke with Air Force Times in an interview declined to discuss specific missions, but offered brief insights into their work in the region.

The Air Force has participated in 40 airdrops alongside coalition partners since March. Those missions were paused for more than a month as Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah began in early May. The U.S. flew its most recent airdrop June 9.

“The BACN mission provides the Air Force, as well as joint and international partners, line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight interoperability, and that’s between dissimilar platforms with varying electronic capabilities,” 430th EECS Commander Lt. Col. R. Clayton “Vector” McCart said. “We capture, translate, combine and, ultimately, relay and extend legacy and modern comms and data links.”

That means flagging potential threats to the cargo aircraft ferrying shipments of food, any course corrections or other important details from mission planners and other troops around the area.

In a region as large as CENTCOM, airdrops can be derailed by a number of variables, from weather to other flight safety issues. The BACN aircraft, which carries two pilots, can quickly relay real-time changes coming from the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar to mission partners on the front lines.

“We can monitor progress in a way that other platforms may not be able to see … as far as locations of the assets, the weather calls, etc. Weather plays a big factor in the airdrops off the coast of Gaza,” Capt. Britton “Rad” Ellington, an E-11A pilot who previously flew the service’s now-retired E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, aircraft, said.

With a range of more than 6,900 miles and a typical sortie time of around 10 hours, the aircraft can take over where satellite phones fail, and interpret transmissions between the military’s myriad communications systems that can’t otherwise connect. While AFCENT declined to say how many of the service’s seven E-11As are operating in theater, the 430th acts as a data lilypad for more than 1,000 hours every two weeks.

“We’re just not relegated to an airdrop. For instance, we could do that as a part of a larger expectation from CENTCOM leadership, and just move around the battlespace. … We’re not really tethered to any one location,” McCart said.

The E-11A is in the process of establishing its new home at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, within the 18th Airborne Command and Control Squadron. It’s one of four missions replacing JSTARS planes at Robins over the next several years; the squadron is expected to become fully operational by 2027.

The 430th EECS, which deploys out of the Middle East, and doubles as a training unit, will shift its training mission to Robins.

“Every sortie is a training sortie, in the sense that we learn every day that we fly,” McCart said.

The service noted their arrival in budget documents released March 11. The first of 10 EA-37Bs was delivered to the Air Force last year for testing — two years later than anticipated — before heading to its eventual home at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Delivery of the first mission-ready jet is expected sometime in 2024.

It’s unclear to what extent the first five aircraft will be used in testing or if they will enter regular operations as they come online. Air Combat Command, which manages the fleet, declined to provide more details about the jets.

Compass Call is designed to jam enemy signals, including communications, radar and navigations systems, and can suppress enemy air defenses by blocking the connection between weapons systems and command-and-control networks. The aircraft also carries hardware and software that give airmen the ability to hack into wireless devices, defuse roadside bombs and more.

Its new airframe — a Gulfstream G550 business jet outfitted with advanced electronic attack equipment by an L3Harris-BAE Systems team — will also be able to soar higher than 40,000 feet and fly at nearly 600 mph, nearly twice as high and as fast as the legacy EC-130H.

The 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron at Davis-Monthan will be the first to transition to the new Compass Call, which began flying in the 1980s. As it prepares to replace old with new, the squadron logged its final flight in an EC-130H on Feb. 15.

“Throughout its storied existence, the squadron’s adaptability and commitment to evolving military technologies shine through, having operated 11 different aircraft types across six continents,” 43rd ECS Commander Lt. Col. Tray Wood said in a statement. “The final EC-130H flight marks the end of an era and signals the beginning of a new chapter with the forthcoming EA-37B transition.”

The 41st and 42nd Electronic Combat Squadrons, also based at Davis-Monthan, are still flying the legacy platform. The 41st is the only remaining operational squadron flying the EC-130H; the 42nd is a training squadron.

The new EA-37B, which was redesignated from EC-37B late last year, comes as the Air Force looks to replace many of its decades-old aircraft with more-capable versions that may have a better shot at surviving in future conflicts against advanced adversaries like China.

The service said in November it had retired nine of its 14 old Compass Calls so far. Air Force budget documents show that the service plans to send one more EC-130H to its aircraft “Boneyard” this year. The budget also includes an additional $15 million for operating and maintaining the Compass Call program, driven by fielding the new aircraft and storing the retiring planes.

A mainstay in U.S. Central Command during the war on terror, the EC-130H carries a 13-person crew, including two pilots, a navigator, a flight engineer, a mission crew commander and supervisor, a signals analyst and multiple cryptologic language analysts. The Air Force contends that though its new Compass Call airframe is smaller, advances in equipment will allow it to consolidate jobs onboard and cut the crew to nine members.

The 41st Electronic Combat Squadron spent 20 years overseas with the Compass Call, becoming the longest continuously deployed Air Force unit in Afghanistan at nearly 14,800 sorties over 90,000 flying hours before returning home in 2021.

The Air Force announced Tuesday that Beale will add a new battle management control squadron, bringing 140 personnel to the base in the coming years. Squadron staff are expected to begin arriving this summer.

The service called the move a “vital step” in its effort to modernize battle management, the enterprise that handles data on potential threats, troop movements and other information the military needs to plan and direct operations. The Air Force hopes it can leverage an array of sensors and new artificial intelligence tools to provide that data, rather than relying on fleets of purpose-built aircraft and manual analysis.

While the Air Force declined to provide specifics of what Beale’s new squadron will do, it said the unit will integrate with the base’s Common Mission Control Center, run by the 427th Reconnaissance Squadron. The center consolidates information — like images, target-tracking data and other communications — collected around the clock by the military’s network of aircraft, satellites, ships, ground radars and more, then analyzes and shares it with other units and decisionmakers.

The squadron will “perform battle management of manned and unmanned new and legacy aircraft, and allow greater collaboration between information systems,” the Air Force said in a release.

It’s unclear whether the new squadron will absorb airmen who operate Beale’s fleet of U-2 Dragon Lady aircraft, which are slated to retire starting in fiscal year 2026.

The announcement follows the stand-up of the 728th Battle Management Control Squadron at Robins AFB, Georgia, in February 2023. That squadron is tasked with helping to deconflict airspace, set rendezvous points for aerial refueling and provide tactical reconnaissance in U.S. Central Command.

It was established as Robins prepared to retire its E-8 Joint STARS ground target-tracking fleet, the last of which left the base late last year. The 728th absorbed airmen from the 116th and 461st Air Control Wings, which flew JSTARS, and took over duties from the 727th Expeditionary Air Control Squadron, which is now based at Shaw AFB, South Carolina.

Like Robins, Beale will pivot to a larger battle management role as it phases out multiple legacy aircraft: the U-2 and the RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance drone.

Beale’s 27 Cold War-era U-2 spy planes rotate through military installations around the globe on high-altitude reconnaissance missions that require their pilots wear astronaut-like suits to breathe at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. But service officials argue there are more reliable, cost-effective ways to photograph enemy compounds and military buildups. Air Force fiscal 2025 budget documents include plans to scale back the plane’s maintenance funding by more than $85 million.

One of Beale’s U-2 trainers took its final flight earlier this year as the base prepares to downsize the rest of the fleet.

Beale retired its last RQ-4, the high-flying drone that was meant to replace the U-2, in 2022.

The four-day Red Skies exercise, hosted by Space Training and Readiness Command’s 392nd Combat Training Squadron, intended to flex the muscles of Delta 9 Guardians who are training to defend U.S. satellite systems that form the backbone of American military operations.

“Our strategic competitors are preparing space capabilities to find and target and attack our terrestrial forces, right? We know they’re planning and building to deny, degrade our space capabilities as well. So our nation’s responding,” Brig. Gen. Todd Moore, deputy commander of STARCOM, told Air Force Times.

Though details are classified, more than three dozen guardians from Deltas 9, 2, 3, 7 and 11 worked together for the first time through a simulated exercise to maintain tactical command and control of several satellites while building awareness of what physical and digital threats might be lurking.

“Not all plans survive,” Brown, a member of Delta 9, which focuses on orbital warfare, said of the exercise. “On-the-fly planning is essential for crews to understand how to get after and how to accomplish [the mission].”

Red Skies followed a series of electronic warfare-focused Black Skies exercises, which began in September 2022. A cyber warfare exercise, Blue Skies, is expected later this year.

The exercises also come as Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman seeks to boost the service’s combat readiness through more robust and realistic operational test and training infrastructure, including by building live ranges and investing in mission-specific simulators, while accelerating the tempo and increasing the scope of exercises. The results of those exercises will shape the force’s development and design.

In the past, Saltzman said, readiness metrics reflected whether troops could operate military space systems unthreatened. That has changed.

“It will no longer be sufficient to fight for space superiority against our pacing threat. We have provided space effects with impunity for decades. … These days are over,” Saltzman said in a Feb. 13 keynote speech at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium.

Because it’s rare for deltas to work together, crew integration and coordination between them during Red Skies was a top priority for Capt. DeShawna Moore, the 392nd CTS’ lead exercise planner.

“My overall objective was seeing that play out, and seeing where the efficiency is to help direct where the training or where Red Skies goes next,” Moore said.

Red Skies is one of several events that the Space Force will use as it builds toward running several simultaneous exercises in what 392nd CTS Commander Lt. Col. Scott Nakatani called a “cohesive space sortie.”

“We need to catch up to that level of proficiency that all the other services have in operating in their domain in support of the combatant commanders’ [operational] plan,” Nakatani said.

While there’s no date set for the overarching exercise, Moore and Nakatani said they hope to introduce live fire into the next Red Skies simulation, which could come in fiscal year 2025.

Col. Nick Hague will pilot SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, which will carry four crew members aboard the company’s Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station sometime in August or later, the service announced Wednesday.

Hague will serve as a flight engineer aboard the ISS, where he and the other astronauts will spend six months completing research and the daily work of running the orbital outpost.

He’ll join others already aboard the ISS to live in zero-gravity alongside his Crew-9 teammates, American astronauts Commander Zena Cardman and Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson, and Roscomos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov.

While the trip is a first step for the Space Force, it may feel like less of a giant leap for Hague.

Picked by NASA as an astronaut in 2013, this will be Hague’s third launch and second mission to the space station. His first attempted trip to the space station in 2018 was aborted after a rocket booster malfunction; in 2019, Hague served as the flight engineer at the ISS for 203 days, during which he spent nearly 20 hours on three spacewalks and performed hundreds of scientific experiments.

After returning home from orbit in October 2019, Hague became the newly created Space Force’s director of test and evaluation. He officially transferred to the service from the Air Force in 2021.

Hague is a 1998 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in astronautical engineering. About two-thirds of NASA astronauts have served in the military, the Space Force said.

“Being a part of this mission is a unique honor, but it’s truly a collective effort,” Hague said. “Guardians worldwide ensure safe and secure operations of critical systems for launch and on station. From GPS satellites that underpin our station navigation systems, to space domain awareness sites around the globe that help NASA prevent orbital debris from colliding with the space station, to the launch range that my crew will use when we liftoff, guardians provide critical support without which our NASA human spaceflight program wouldn’t be possible.”

The Crew-9 mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, designed to shuttle workers to and from the ISS, where scientists are researching the challenges of long-duration space flight.

For now, the rest of the Space Force will remain firmly on the ground.