In a roundtable with reporters at September’s Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference, AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley said the command is clearing about three Ospreys for flight operations every 10 days as it gradually lifts the fleet’s grounding.

AFSOC has roughly 50 CV-22s, and expects to have all its Ospreys back to normal flying operations by late 2024 or early 2025. Conley would not say where Ospreys are likely to deploy.

The military in December 2023 grounded all its V-22s, which are flown by AFSOC, the Navy and the Marine Corps, following the fatal crash of an Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan a week earlier. That crash killed all eight crew members aboard.

An Air Force investigation later found the crash was caused in part by cracks in a crucial gear driving the tilt-rotor aircraft’s proprotors, and also by the pilot’s decision not to land the aircraft after multiple alerts known as “chip burn warnings” sounded in the aircraft. Those alerts let Osprey air crews know when metal flakes are starting to come off of its gears, which can be a sign the aircraft is stressed.

After a three-month grounding, the Pentagon announced it would start to return its Osprey fleet to flight operations, after revising training for troops flying them and changing maintenance procedures. There were no equipment modifications instituted as a prerequisite for returning the aircraft to flight.

AFSOC put new operating guidance in place earlier this year to require Osprey pilots to land sooner when chip burn warnings go off, Conley said. Now, Osprey air crews are instructed to land as soon as practical after the first warning sounds, and after a second, land as soon as possible.

Pilots always have discretion to fly their aircraft the way they think it requires, Conley said, since each flight has its own unique circumstances. But the tighter guidance on landing is meant to “make it less ambiguous to the crews” to decide what they should do in dangerous situations.

AFSOC had to quickly requalify its Osprey instructors and evaluators before it could start retraining air crew members, Conley said.

And Conley said AFSOC has been “very deliberate and slow and methodical” as it goes through its Osprey fleet one by one, and paying particular attention to aircraft parts.

Naval Air Systems Command Boss Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, who oversees the military’s Osprey program, told lawmakers in June that the entire V-22 fleet would likely not be back to normal flight operations until at least mid-2025.

A satellite from Unseenlabs with a laser payload established a stable link for several minutes with an optical ground station supplied by Cailabs, according to the ministry, which provided €5.5 million ($6.1 million) in funding for the project. The successful test this summer opens the way to integrating the system on France’s future military satellites, the ministry said.

The point-to-point nature of lasers makes them more secure than radio frequencies, and they can’t be jammed the way radio can, Cailabs CEO Jean-François Morizur told Defense News in an interview on Thursday. Additionally, a laser link can transfer very large files such as detailed Earth images in minutes, something that might require multiple orbits using radio signals, the CEO said.

“Anti-jamming is a big one,” Morizur said. “Low probability of detection, low probability of intercept means you can deploy it in some difficult contexts, you just don’t have the same signature as an RF antenna. Putting that on a ship makes sense, because you then reduce the radio footprint of your ship – both for ship-to-ship and ship to satellite.”

The higher data rates offered by laser are important for intelligence applications, as the growing volume of detailed satellite images of Earth is creating “very, very big files” that can be “quite tricky” to transfer with today’s satellite radio transmitters, according to the Cailabs CEO.

The successful test will make it possible to use space-based laser comms on mobile, land-based, naval and airborne platforms, the Armed Forces Ministry said. While the experiment is not the first for space-to-Earth laser communications, it’s the first using a commercially available ground station, according to Morizur.

The French government is keeping some information around the testing under wraps, including details on the date or who provided the laser payload. The ministry said the Keraunos project contributes to objectives in the 2024-2030 Military Programming Law to strengthen France’s space capabilities.

One of the goals of the Keraunos optical communications satellite project is to mitigate the effect of atmospheric turbulence that can hurt transmission quality, the ministry said. While the laser system used in the test will pass through some clouds, it can’t penetrate heavy cloud cover, according to Morizur.

The changed security situation in the world has accelerated government thinking around space, “one of the battlegrounds,” with a growing realization that space supremacy will be important, according to Morizur. In addition, the reduction in launch costs and cheap access to space are speeding up the space economy, he said.

“The more the space economy is growing, the more you have new tools, it becomes a field like any other, basically, where battle happens.”

The Cailabs ground station used in the test consists of a dome with a large telescope and several smaller ones, with the complexity being in processing the laser light, “that’s kind of where the magic happens,” Morizur said. The ground station can be made truck-sized, according to the CEO. Cailabs competitors include Safran in France and BridgeCom in the United States, he said.

Cailabs has seven ground stations under contract, including the one used in the test for the Armed Forces Ministry and a second one on order for the French government, as well as stations to be built for civilian clients including the European Space Agency and South Korea’s Contec. Most orders are for civilian applications, mainly for imagery, according to Morizur.

Morizur said the market for radio satellite gateways is valued at around $3 billion a year, and while optical ground stations will initially be a fragment of that, over time the opportunity will be “in the billions.”

Cailabs is currently leading in technology, price point and product maturity with its ground stations, and was picked for a number of recent competitive contracts, according to the CEO. The company has set up a team in the United States, where it sees contract opportunities, “and we are looking forward to supporting the U.S. government in many different ways,” Morizur said.

The company, which was co-founded by Morizur in 2013 and which has raised €46 million from investors, is unprofitable for now as it continues to spend on R&D and expansion, the CEO said. Cailabs received more than €10 million in orders last year, and “we stopped calling ourselves a startup a few years ago,” he added.

The upgrade marks a change of plan for the team known as the Frecce Tricolori, which had previously planned to use Leonardo’s M-345 jet – a more basic version of the M-346.

The announcement of the use of the M-346 was made on Thursday at Istrana Air Base in Italy with the presentation of a jet in Frecce Tricolori colours, coinciding with the team’s return from a tour of the United States.

“The version of the M-346 presented in Istrana today will be produced by Leonardo for the National Aerobatic Team with specific requirements of the Italian Air Force,” Leonardo said in a statement.

The Air Force originally envisioned adopting Leonardo’s M-345 for the acrobatic role as well as to replace all its M-339 trainer aircraft which entered service in 1982.

While the M-346 is designed as an advanced jet trainer, the M-345 is built to compete with equivalent turbo-prop basic trainers on operational costs.

The M-346 is now in service with the air forces of Italy, the Republic of Singapore, Israel, Poland, Qatar and Greece, while Turkmenistan and Nigeria have purchased the light fighter version.

Nigeria is due to take delivery of the first six of 24 aircraft it has ordered by year end, the country’s Air Force has said.

Pilots from Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, Austria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the Netherlands have sent pilots to train on M-346 in Sardinia, Italy.

As the U.S. enters its third year since 2001 without major combat operations, AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind sees an opportunity to reset how the Air Force trains its most elite corps — and he’s looking to the 1990s for inspiration.

“The intent, as we’re looking at all of our pipelines, is what can we establish as ‘basic mission qualified’?” he said in a Sept. 13 interview on the sidelines of the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

In August, the command revealed it was embarking on a wide-ranging review of its training requirements and processes, aiming to move the organization of 20,400 troops forward after decades at war in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

The changes would revamp AFSOC for a faster-paced, more collaborative way of doing business — particularly as the Air Force shrinks and pivots toward competing with China rather than warding off terror groups.

Bauernfeind hopes to reshape the training pipeline so that airmen can level up over the course of their careers, rather than starting out with a wide range of qualifications that they may never use.

“We were very comfortable with basic mission qualifications,” he said of the pre-9/11 era. “Then you would get to your operational unit and … then get the additional special qualifications you needed as you grew as an operator.”

That changed as the demand for America’s most elite airmen grew.

The three-star general, a career special operations pilot, witnessed firsthand the Air Force’s transition from more routine combat operations of the 1990s to its rush to fight elusive enemies in multiple countries after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In the early 2010s — as the U.S. marked its first decade of war in Afghanistan, the Islamic State began its resurgence after the U.S. drawdown from Iraq, and the Syrian civil war turned increasingly bloody — AFSOC scrambled to pump out as many fully qualified air commandos as possible.

“When we attempted to put all operators getting all training in [initial qualifications] … the training pipeline exploded,” Bauernfeind said. “These air commandos were not getting the sets and reps to learn their basic skills before we were putting the advanced skill right on top of them.”

Right now, AFSOC hopefuls can spend years becoming fully qualified before joining their first squadron. Then they’re ready to deploy as soon as they arrive at that duty station.

Going forward, Bauernfeind wants to use the first four years differently.

As he sees it, airmen would spend up to two years in initial qualification training before reaching their special ops squadron. Once there, they’d get up to 18 months of training time to learn more about their mission and the special operations culture before deploying.

That time is baked into the Air Force’s new combat readiness cycle, known as Air Force Generation or “AFFORGEN,” which moves units through three six-month periods of training and maintenance before a fourth six-month stretch where they become available for overseas missions.

Overhauling the process may boost morale and long-term retention for airmen who want to make a difference, Bauernfeind said.

“Young Americans want to come in and do,” he said. “They want to know that what they are doing is moving the needle. … When they know they’re just sitting there and training for years on end, that is not always a positive aspect.”

It’s unclear how many more airmen AFSOC may be able to process each year with the revisions. Those changes may also alleviate manning problems in understaffed squadrons.

AFSOC and other organizations that control the Air Force’s training programs — like Air Education and Training Command, 19th Air Force and 2nd Air Force — have already started making changes.

The Air Force confirmed in August that Bauernfeind is looking to cut the five-week combat dive training course as an initial requirement for three special warfare fields. Airmen may still be able to earn their combat dive badge, or “scuba bubble,” later in their career if needed.

Bauernfeind told Air Force Times that several other types of skills, like airdrops, aerial refueling and low-level flight, could become part of unit training rather than the initial pipeline. He said the standards used to decide whether airmen should move on in training will change accordingly.

“We’re not going to have people getting judged for things they’re unprepared for,” he said.

The service has also begun reviewing training for the AC-130J Ghostrider, the Air Force’s newest gunship.

It’s trying to fast-track special operations flight school by sending students straight to AFSOC training units after they earn their wings on the T-6 Texan II. That cuts out the intermediate phase of flying the T-1 Jayhawk, which is heading into retirement after serving as the stepping stone to mobility and special operations aircraft.

That decision can shorten pilot training time by six months, AFSOC spokesperson Lt. Col. Becky Heyse said.

Around 30 airmen are expected to go straight from undergraduate pilot training to AFSOC to learn to fly the U-28 Draco reconnaissance plane, the C-146 Wolfhound transport plane and the AC-130J gunship in fiscal 2024, Heyse said.

Airmen are also making the most of slowdowns in the Air Force’s pilot training pipeline by heading to survival training before starting flight school. That can reduce a trainee’s wait time by at least 30 days, Heyse said.

Other tweaks, like dropping a requirement that students learn a particular type of landing that has never been used in combat, are streamlining the C-130 syllabus as well. And adding more simulators and virtual reality software can free up aircraft to fly combat missions instead of being tied up in training at home.

Bauernfeind said his team wants the operational units to report back on whether their newest members are well-trained or if the changes are going too far.

He expects to have a fuller picture of what further revisions are needed within the next 90 days. Implementing them could take months, if not years.

Efforts within AFSOC to build a tiered training system mirrors a larger shift in that direction across the entire Air Force. The service said Monday it will split training into five levels that are increasingly difficult and specialized, from skills learned in boot camp to those needed for austere deployments.

As it looks to the future, AFSOC is also exploring ways to add more digital expertise into its ranks. Airmen could soon receive more intensive training in cyber warfare and electromagnetic spectrum operations, as the command invests in more tools to infiltrate enemy networks and sense who’s nearby.

“The nation that can control and manage the electromagnetic spectrum has got the upper hand in high-end combat,” Bauernfeind said. “My confidence goes up even higher when we have those teammates who fully understand what those data links are doing, what those jammers are doing, what those collectors are doing, and … if the systems are not operating as designed, can jump in.”

Bauernfeind acknowledged that airmen’s motivation can wane as opportunities for combat deployments dwindle. He hopes to replace the constant pace of operations with a burgeoning slate of training exercises. And he’s encouraged units to step up their practice at home, pushing their limits with back-to-back sorties, quick-turn refueling and more.

“The wings have responded masterfully,” he said. “They’re enjoying the fact that they’re flying more … because you can hone your skill.”

But a robust flying program costs money, and will require AFSOC to move some funds away from lesser priorities. It also means maintainers have to keep as many aircraft in the air as possible.

Bauernfeind recognizes that balancing the needs of those two communities is delicate.

“We don’t want to do this on the backs of our maintainers,” he said.

The planned European Flight Training Center would be the U.S. company’s first in the continent, and in the future could expand to teach pilots from nations other than Romania, OJ Sanchez, Lockheed’s integrated fighter group vice president and general manager, told Defense News in a Sept. 13 interview.

The Romanians “need to train their pilots, and there was no good place to do that, as well as their maintainers,” he said.

Lockheed announced late last month that it had signed a letter of intent with Romania and the Netherlands to establish the European F-16 Training Center. Sanchez said the company is confident its contract with Romania will be signed by the end of the year.

As part of this arrangement, the Netherlands will loan F-16s to Romania for training. Sanchez said the number of aircraft is still being negotiated as part of the larger contract.

Romania also struck a deal with Norway in November to buy 32 used F-16s, which would allow Romania to expand its fledgling F-16 fleet and retire the last of its outdated Soviet-era MiG-21 fighters.

At first, this training center will focus on teaching Romanian pilots to fly F-16s, Sanchez said. But over time, Lockheed hopes more nations could start sending their airmen there — including Ukraine.

“The European Flight Training Center may be a good option for countries like Ukraine, or others who may need that support as they build out their air force needs,” Sanchez said.

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the embattled nation repeatedly asked NATO nations for modern F-16 fighters to bolster and modernize its air force. Last month, the Netherlands and Denmark announced plans to provide Ukraine with its first F-16s, and the U.S. will help teach Ukrainian pilots to fly them.

Ukraine expects to continue modernizing its air force in years to come, and will need more venues where its pilots can learn to fly western fourth-generation jets. Lockheed sees this Romanian training center as one potential option for Ukraine.

Sanchez declined to offer details such as how many pilots this training center might be able to train annually, saying that information is not ready to be released. He said it’s still too soon to say how soon the training center might start training the first Romanian pilots, but that Lockheed hopes to move quickly after the contract is signed.

But Lockheed plans for the Romanian training center’s curriculum and approach to be largely similar to the Air Force’s international training units. The Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing in Arizona, for example, will start training some Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s in October. The director of the U.S. Air National Guard predicted at AFA that some Ukrainian pilots could be finished within three months, depending on their skills and experience.

The flight training center in Romania will start with English language training, Sanchez said, since that is “the international language of flying.”

International F-16 training also typically involves basic flight training academics, possibly including flights in a smaller plane like a Cessna to get the students some flight time, he said. After that, pilots have six to 12 months of basic flying in a jet, depending on their level of experience, before they get to specialized flight training in their fighter.

Lockheed Martin’s goal is to have student pilots graduate from this Romanian training center with basic proficiency on an F-16 necessary to join a squadron and be an effective wingman, Sanchez said.

Those pilots would still need further training and development to grow and learn advanced maneuvers after graduation, but Sanchez said that more in-depth training would happen elsewhere.

Lockheed will take the lead on organizing this flight training center, including bringing together partners from European and U.S. companies to conduct flight and simulation training, Sanchez said. The company expects to have several former U.S. airmen in its ranks serve as flight instructors at the training center in Romania.

This will be the first F-16 flight training center Lockheed Martin has set up in Europe, but the company has launched other training centers elsewhere. The Romanian training center will focus entirely on F-16s, but Sanchez left the door open to starting additional centers that could teach pilots to fly other jets such as the F-35.

“Training is always a critical need and enabler,” Sanchez said.

Two of those units, known as “integrated mission deltas,” will stand up as early as October to “provide world-class effects in the face of a determined adversary,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said here Tuesday.

It’s among the latest examples of how the youngest branch of the U.S. armed forces is trying to improve its combat prowess and quality of life by eschewing traditional military practices.

“As we’ve evolved from our historical origins in Air Force Space Command to the U.S. Space Force, it was an opportunity to relook at the kinds of organizational structures that we thought would be most effective for the new challenges associated with a contested space domain,” Saltzman told reporters at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

Typically, operations, sustainment, training and other facets of a squadron’s readiness are managed by different commands with specialized expertise. But fragmenting those roles can make it more difficult for each organization to understand the larger picture, and it can slow any needed improvements.

The Space Force believes that the colonels who run deltas — the service’s equivalent of Air Force wings or Army battalions — rank high enough to holistically manage readiness without losing touch with the realities of daily operations.

One new delta will support the Space Force’s electromagnetic warfare mission, while the other focuses on the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) enterprise — missions that could yield quick, actionable results for troops at home and abroad.

Because space electronic warfare units deploy overseas, Saltzman said an integrated mission delta can streamline the process of moving them around the world.

“Sometimes it’s very simple. A deployable counter-[communications] system goes out the door with a generator. Does that generator work?” Saltzman said. “It’s going to get to an austere location and it’s going to have to have power. … We have to make sure that all the antennas have the right cabling [and] that the cabling is healthy before it goes out. Then, when it’s in the field, you’ve got to continue to do the maintenance.”

The PNT delta will focus on ensuring maintainers and contracting staff are on the same page as systems age and new combat requirements arise.

Including an acquisition element in the integrated mission deltas can also allow guardians to quickly develop new hardware and apps they need to adapt to emerging threats.

Saltzman said the experiment will show the Space Force whether deltas can have their own acquisition cell without disrupting larger, longer-term programs underway at Space Systems Command, the service’s development hub.

Other efforts to grow the military space enterprise are underway as well.

The Air National Guard is standing up two new military space units in Hawaii, including one to protect U.S. communications satellites and other space systems and another to infiltrate and confuse enemy networks.

And the Space Force in December aims to open a new subordinate headquarters in Europe to manage space operations across the continent. Those service component offices act as a voice for space missions in daily operations, ensuring the Space Force provides the right communications, missile warning and other services for troops in the region.

Space Force components are already working with the joint force at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command and U.S. Forces Korea. That has created more realistic and helpful training exercises and built relationships between units, Saltzman said.

“They are talking with the same vocabulary, the same understanding of the missions, the same understanding of the people and the capabilities and it’s a much tighter integration,” he said.

While 180 minutes may seem like a long time to sit in a theater, processing huge amounts of data and updating fighting systems in so short a period is a challenging target for Col. Josh Koslov, the commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing.

“They have some wicked threats out there, and it takes us a little bit, working with our engineers, working with intel, to really crack the code,” Koslov said Sept. 13, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Air, Space and Cyber Conference at National Harbor in Maryland.

The 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing develops waveforms and updates jamming, spoofing and spying kits aboard aircraft such as the F-35. It’s an outgrowth of an electromagnetic spectrum superiority study conducted by the Department of Defense as it seeks to rejuvenate the military’s electronic warfare capabilities. At just 2 years old, the wing’s legacy thus far is short. But its potential reach is long.

“Our goal, our moonshot, is three hours,” Koslov said. “If you think about trying to get data to fighters, to bombers, to weapons, to countermeasures, to all the things that we do, that’s a good number.”

“The way we used to do it was, kind of, an industrial production-based model,” he said. “We updated B-52s and F-15s on this quarterly process, and that’s how it worked, until we went to a conflict. During the Cold War, there wasn’t a ton of conflicts where we were using those systems. So we got by with that.”

Modern militaries rely on the spectrum to communicate, navigate and guide weapons to their targets; the fight over it — access, manipulation and more — can make or break success. The associated U.S. arsenal atrophied in the years following the Cold War, but officials are reprioritizing in preparation for a fight with Russia in Europe or China in the Indo-Pacific.

“We had such overmatch in the past, with the assets that we possessed, and our enemies possessed, that it wasn’t as emphasized. We no longer have conventional overmatch,” Koslov said. “The way we’re going to win is by dominating the spectrum.”

At its Eglin Air Force Base home in Florida, personnel with the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing tinker with the latest software and code to counter what’s observed in the field. Crews have hands on more than 70 systems, by Koslov’s count, and each has a different timeline, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.

“For us, our key platforms are platforms like the F-35, the B-21, our modern platforms. We get that data transported back to Eglin, then allow our engineers to work on it, and then push it back out to the edge as quickly as possible,” he said. “Our older systems are a little bit clunkier than our modern systems.”

Updates in peaceful years past have rolled out on a regular basis or in chunks, ultimately lacking the nimbleness the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing wants.

“That’s not good enough in a rapid-and-agile spectrum world that we do live in today,” Koslov said. “So we’re changing.”

Key to the commander’s desired three-hour window are crowdsourced data, plucked from the latest sorties, and ensuring the right info-shuttling networks are in place and insulated. Terabytes of data will be flowing, straining both pipes and parsers.

The Air Force is constructing what’s known as the Advanced Battle Management System, part of the Defense Department’s larger Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort to connect forces across land, air, sea, space and cyber. By linking once-disparate troops and databases, the U.S. hopes to outwit and outshoot tech-savvy adversaries.

“We’re going to be in a contested spectrum environment. There’s no doubt about that,” said Koslov, who previously led the 609th Air Operations Center in Qatar. “It’s going to be critical that we have a PACE plan, a backup plan, in order to be able to push data and track who has data and who doesn’t, right?”

Koslov does not feel the need to scatter specialists across a theater of war to effectively execute the reprogramming mission. Instead, he said, there is value in concentrating operations, as is now the case on the Florida panhandle.

“I don’t foresee putting reprogrammers out on rocks in the Pacific,” he said. “I think that’s a bad idea.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown this year warned Congress the Defense Department was losing its ability to fend off attacks on the electromagnetic spectrum, leaving troops susceptible on the high-tech battlefields of tomorrow.

Koslov in a separate interview last month agreed with Brown’s appraisal and said his wing takes seriously the charge of building back the necessary muscle memory.

“Everyone has recognized that the future of warfighting is about data, is about the spectrum. So we’re all rushing toward the same objective of being able to fight and win in the spectrum,” he said at the time. “Each of them, our adversaries, have approached the problem a little bit differently. But they’re definitely raising their game.”

The Raider, which the Air Force unveiled in a highly publicized ceremony in Palmdale, California, in December, is in the midst of an extensive series of ground tests for several systems, officials said at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland. The testing is required before the aircraft can fly for the first time.

The Air Force intends this new highly classified bomber, which in about a decade will replace the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit, to be a significant new weapon in its arsenal to deter adversaries such as China from acts of aggression. It has significant range and advanced stealth capabilities the Air Force hopes will allow it to slip undetected into enemy territory to carry out penetrating strike missions. The service views it as the “backbone” of its future bomber force.

Air Force Global Strike Command head Gen. Thomas Bussiere said in a Tuesday panel that the Air Force and Northrop Grumman are conducting engine runs to test the B-21′s propulsion systems at Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.

In an interview with Defense News on Wednesday, Tom Jones, president of Northrop Grumman’s aeronautics systems unit, declined to say when the engine runs began or what further tests must occur before the first flight can take place, citing security concerns.

Engine runs are performed with the B-21 restrained in a dock, Jones said, and are meant to ensure the engines are working correctly and responding to the bomber’s throttles. But other prep work done on the Raider in recent months, Jones added, included activating its systems, checking to ensure its control actuation systems work, and ensuring doors and landing gears open or extend properly.

“We’ve made a substantial dent in the work scope that needs to get done in ground check, and we’re very confident we’re going to make the flight this year,” Jones said.

The B-21 team also conducted troubleshooting reviews of the bomber’s fuel systems, William Bailey, director of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office that oversees the B-21, said in a Wednesday panel. The digital tools used to check the bomber’s fuel infrastructure allowed it to move to the engine run phase in less than five days, he added.

Jones said that on any new aircraft’s development, such checks are crucial to ensuring the fuel moves around to different places as intended.

Even under the best of circumstances, Jones explained, the process can be time-consuming. But if something is faulty, technicians have to get down into hard-to-reach nooks and crannies of the plane to locate the problem and fix it.

“Getting that right is a big deal on any aircraft,” Jones said. “But on a flying wing [such as the B-21], it’s critical to stability.”

Jones said Northrop Grumman has found and fixed things that need to be adjusted or that were installed incorrectly on the Raider during tests such as engine runs, but that those discoveries are part of the normal process of fine-tuning an entirely new aircraft.

He added that investments the company made in digital models and software simulations paid off by helping catch issues and fix them faster, including during fuel checks. And the fact that functional fuel checks were able to take place in just five days showed the B-21′s underlying software is solid, he said.

That software testing is now complete, and only ground tests of its hardware remains, which Jones said is a reversal from how new airplane tests typically work. “Every aircraft that’s ever been made, the airplane has been waiting for the software — at least the ones that have software,” he explained.

In his panel, Bailey joked that the B-21′s software engineers “smack talk” the hardware team, “saying: ‘Would you please hurry up? We’re done.’ ”

The scheduled first flight will take the first bomber to Edwards Air Force Base in California for even more extensive flight tests. It’s taken longer for the B-21 to reach its first flight than its predecessor, the B-2, which had its first flight eight months after its November 1988 rollout.

Jones said the increased complexity of the B-21, including more than 30 years of advancements in technology, led to the longer schedule. But building this first test B-21 as a production-representative aircraft instead of a “bespoke” experimental model — while making things more complicated — will pay off down the road by making it easier to shift into production and leverage economies of scale, he said. For example, the initial B-21 has the mission systems and low-observable stealth coatings all production bombers will have.

“It took a little bit of extra time, [but] it’s going to pay dividends,” Jones said.

In March, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall sounded a note of caution about the B-21′s first flight, saying it had slipped a few months but was within the baseline schedule.

At the AFA conference this week, Air Force officials such as Kendall, acquisition chief Andrew Hunter and Bussiere expressed satisfaction with the B-21 program. Kendall said he is hopeful the first flight will happen this year, “absent any unexpected surprises.”

“But surprises do happen in acquisition programs,” Kendall added.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Wednesday announced the possible deal, which could change in quantity and contract value during the negotiations process.

The potential sale, which now goes to Congress for consideration, would also include 26 Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines for the aircraft, an upgrade to the Block 4 standard, as well as cryptographic appliques and electronic warfare support.

If approved, the sale will bring South Korea’s fleet to 65 F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing aircraft. The country’s Air Force is currently in the process of taking delivery of 40 F-35As it previously ordered to equip its 17th Fighter Wing at Cheongju.

South Korea is using its F-35As to replace it fleet of McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom II fighter jets. It had previously considered buying the F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variant to equip its planned aircraft carrier.

However, the Defense Ministry said earlier this year it is looking at the feasibility of building a 50,000-ton aircraft carrier, which is considerably larger than originally planned. Such a ship would enable the South Koreans to operate catapult-launched carrier aircraft instead of the F-35B. This would likely be a naval version of the locally designed Korea Aerospace Industries KF-21 Boramae fighter. South Korea’s defense acquisition agency concluded in January that developing a carrierborne KF-21 was feasible within a 10-year time frame.

South Korea is technically still at war with its nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea, as the two countries have not signed a formal peace treaty following the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

The active duty Air Force made it about 90% of the way to its goal of 26,877 enlisted recruits, falling short by nearly 2,700 airmen, Air Force Recruiting Service boss Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein told reporters here Wednesday.

The Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard fared worse, limping toward the finish line with 30% shortfalls in each component. The Reserve and Guard had hoped to bring in 9,300 and 11,745 enlisted airmen, respectively.

Meanwhile, the Space Force, which falls under the Department of the Air Force, surpassed its enlisted goal of 472 new guardians.

Those numbers will be finalized after the year’s last batch of new airmen and guardians ship out to basic military training next week. Recruiting pushes typically focus on enlisted troops, who comprise the majority of the armed forces and lack the same college-to-military pipelines that bring in officers more easily.

“We remain committed to recruiting only America’s best to be the next generation of American airmen and [Space Force] guardians,” Amrhein said at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

How the slowdown may affect the Air Force’s daily operations in combat and at bases around the world remains to be seen. But officials worry it will hinder U.S. efforts to counter Chinese and Russian aggression and influence around the world, and to win future wars.

“The geopolitical landscape was so much different” in 1999, the last time the entire Air Force failed to hit its enlisted recruiting goal, Amrhein said. “Missing this year is kind of at a critical point.”

Still, recruiting officials said they haven’t seen a drop in the quality of incoming airmen.

Amrhein commended a slew of changes to policies around drug use, body composition, tattoos and more for softening the blow without compromising quality, as well as potentially setting the service up for future success. More than 1,000 people have entered the Air Force as a result of those tweaks, he said.

“If we hadn’t deviated much from our former recruiting practices, this recruiting shortfall could have been much worse,” Amrhein said.

With that in mind, the service’s top recruiter said he is cautiously optimistic about surpassing next year’s goal. The final quarter of fiscal 2023 has been “extremely strong,” Amrhein said, and the service has already gotten a head start on the first months of fiscal 2024.

The Air Force hopes to bring in 25,900 new active duty enlisted airmen next fiscal year.

It has already filled all entry-level positions for September and October, and all but 15 jobs in November, Amrhein said. The only exception is 21 positions in the special warfare community, which are the hardest jobs to fill.

The service is about 2,000 trainees short of the 6,500-person waitlist that Amrhein would like to see at the beginning of the fiscal year. Still, thousands more people are waiting to leave for boot camp than there were at the start of fiscal 2023.

The commander said he aims to return the service’s frazzled recruiters to a more manageable workload after pushing them hard to fill the gap by the end of the year.

“We can’t keep people in that battle rhythm forever,” he said.

To help, nearly 100 more Air Force recruiters will hit the field early next year. Around 1,900 Air Force recruiters are spread across the United States, some of whom are the sole face of the force across a large swath of territory.

The service has also grown its cadre of “e-recruiters,” those who handle online leads rather than probing a local area for interest, from five to 21 workers.

And Amrhein said the service is bringing in around 60 more medical staffers to help work through the massive backlog of health questions that can keep applicants waiting for months.

MHS Genesis, the Pentagon’s new repository of digital health records, can peer into an applicant’s entire medical history — helping avoid potential pitfalls, but creating a bureaucratic headache for those tasked with deciding whether years-old prescriptions and diagnoses are cause for future concern.

It now takes three times as long to process medical files than it did 18 months ago, Amrhein said. That eats away precious time that recruiters need to make contacts and sign contracts.

The service is looking at expanding its waivers for applicants who would otherwise be disqualified by certain medical issues, like past eye surgeries, he added.

Air Force Recruiting Service Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Lisa Craig hopes investments in data-crunching software and other apps that can automate a recruiter’s workload will also help them focus on the areas and tasks that matter most.

Many other challenges remain. Reserve and Guard leaders said they are grappling with congressional limitations on the number of full-time staffers in their components, which have hurt recruiting efforts and end strength.

The portion of qualified Americans who are willing to don a uniform continues to shrink, Amrhein said, making it even more important for troops to familiarize the public with today’s military and break through stereotypes and misperceptions they may hold.

For instance, Amrhein said, someone is more likely to be severely injured on their way to work than they are in the course of military service.

Leaders hope their efforts will break through the noise of everyday life and appeal to young Americans’ desire to make a difference.

“Service to our nation is more than just a Honda Civic,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass said during a keynote address Wednesday, referring to her plan to pay for her cherry-red sedan as a young enlisted airman.

“Service to our nation requires a commitment that you do not find in everyday America,” she said. “This is not Google. This is not Chick-fil-A. This is not Home Depot. … This is the United States Air Force.”