America's New Approach to Air Supremacy: The USAF's Networked Bet

When it comes to air power, the United States stands unmatched. The world’s largest and most potent air force, by a wide margin, is the United States Air Force. The runner-up is the United States Navy. Ranking in the global top ten by number of military aircraft are the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps.

America’s newest fighters are hyper-advanced and functionally invisible to its adversaries. Its workhorse fighters rank among the very best in the world. Its bomber fleet can do things no other bomber fleet on Earth can accomplish, and its ability to move cargo, refuel entire airfleets in flight, and maintain awareness of an entire battlespace are all without compare on the global stage.

But American air power is not merely formidable. It is changing. The reasons are complex, ranging from new acquisitions of staggeringly sophisticated technology to real-world constraints like budgeting and strategy, to the new demands of a shifting modern battlefield. It is an approach that promises to rewrite how America fights its air wars, redefine the meaning of American air supremacy, and pioneer a strategic playbook not just for the air wars of the 2020s, but for air wars across the entire twenty-first century.

The transition is neither cosmetic nor optional. It is being driven by a recognition, increasingly explicit among Air Force leaders, that the assumptions underpinning decades of American air dominance are quietly coming apart. The thesis of this analysis is straightforward: faced with shrinking budgets, multiplying threats, and an over-reliance on stealth and exquisite single platforms, the US Air Force is betting that a networked, versatile force of data hubs, missile trucks, and modular fighters can deliver supremacy more cheaply and more durably than buying its way out of the problem.

A Shifting Landscape

On February 12, 2024, the United States Air Force announced that change was on the horizon. Together with the US Space Force, the USAF’s top brass introduced a raft of changes meant to reorient the service toward an age of great-power competition. Among the strategic shifts were a few rather pedestrian ones, but several that were a good deal more substantial. America’s nuclear forces received considerable support.

The organization committed to expanding the ranks of technical personnel able to use modern warfighting methods. And it called for large-scale exercises of a kind America has largely held off from performing, in hopes of getting the US ready for large-scale wartime operations against militarily powerful adversaries.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall framed the urgency in stark terms. “We need these changes now,” he said. “We are out of time to reoptimize our forces to meet the strategic challenges in a time of Great Power Competition.” He returned to the same phrase again later: “We are out of time.” It was a deliberate drumbeat, meant to puncture any sense that the service could afford to drift.

Perhaps the most important part of the new plan is its emphasis on versatility. The strategic shift calls for the creation of a new command center, the Integrated Capabilities Command, meant to do basically what it says on the tin: bring together planning operations at large scale and figure out how to use the Air Force’s many capabilities together, with increasing effectiveness. Other provisions in the report pointed in much the same direction across different areas of Air Force operations. And while it is a new thing for the USAF to publicize that it is thinking this way, it is a shift the service has increasingly woken up to, not as a good idea, but as a necessity.

That reality has increasingly come home to roost in the minds of Air Force leaders. Long accustomed to having the best air arm on the planet, the US has been ineffective, and some might even say complacent, in keeping its advantage over the long term. China now boasts hundreds of Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters, seemingly ideal to ambush America’s key airborne control, tanker, and strategic lift aircraft.

The J-20 and a range of other fighters fly alongside hundreds of strategic bombers and dozens of electronic warfare and control planes. Russia, although its purportedly fifth-generation Su-57 is nowhere to be found over the skies of Ukraine, still fields well over a thousand other air-superiority and multirole fighters, and retains the potential to draw the US into a very damaging air war over continental Europe.

Neither Russia nor China is projected to actually catch up to America anytime soon in air power. But that is not the point. The current US approach was built for an American public unwilling to accept major combat losses, and for a military branch long used to establishing air superiority quickly and then operating in uncontested skies.

Meanwhile, both primary adversaries, Russia especially, are learning the hard lessons of twenty-first-century air warfare and enhancing their capabilities accordingly. Get into a conflict against them, and the US is almost certain to come out on top, but it is almost guaranteed to absorb costs and complications that it simply is not prepared to accept.

The Limits of Buying New Aircraft

While the United States typically solves these problems by building new aircraft, that approach now displays its own mounting troubles. The most vexing at present is the Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD, meant to produce the world’s first sixth-generation fighter. On paper, the plans are highly impressive: exceptionally sophisticated onboard technology, so-called adaptive cycle engines that can operate across many speeds, and the ability to fly very stealthily while commanding a group of drone wingmen and calling the shots for other American warplanes in a battle environment.

But year-over-year budgets for NGAD are shrinking, and some Air Force leaders have even implied that drastic options, including slashing the program entirely, may be on the table. More likely is a redesign of some kind, intended to bring down costs, along with a potential reduction in the overall number of fighters the US intends to procure. Just how far that number could drop is unknown. Per statements by Secretary Kendall, the redesign might not only eliminate adaptive cycle engines but potentially drop the entire piloted NGAD concept in favor of an unmanned design.

Such cost-saving measures are nothing new. In fact, NGAD is so urgent largely because America slashed its F-22 Raptor program decades ago to save money during the War on Terror. A slimmed-down or canceled NGAD would compound those problems, putting American air superiority in the hands of two underdeveloped programs in a row. That, in turn, would force greater reliance on the multirole F-35 and compel America to start sacrificing real capabilities in a war environment.

Other research and development programs are faring better. The B-21 Raider, America’s next-generation bomber, has pulled off the rare feat of being both on time and under budget. But the Raider fleet is projected to include as few as 100 aircraft, a figure generally believed to be well below the number the US would need to phase out its aging bomber fleet. That is because the Raider must compete for budget not against other bomber designs, but against new logistical programs: the Liberty Lifter seaplane, the Pegasus air-refueling tanker, a next-generation strategic airlift aircraft, and secretive efforts like the purportedly Mach 10-capable Project Mayhem and the alleged RQ-180 spy drone.

All the while, the US must maintain the aircraft it already has in service, produce new and better munitions, and think about the next next generation of advanced projects to ensure the USAF’s upcoming evolution is not its last. Every one of these initiatives is, by nature, meant to up the ante for global air strategy. As General Mike Minihan, who leads the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, put it regarding its upcoming projects: “We must imagine and demand a flight line where field and platform are unrecognizable to our grandparents.” It is high ambition, to be sure, but the drive to develop and pay for so many unrecognizable things at once brings enormous pressure.

Air Power Built for the Wrong War

As America’s military budget cracks under the Air Force’s intense demands, the country’s military leaders have begun to question just what American air power is meant to accomplish. For decades, the Air Force was part of the War on Terror across the Middle East and Central Asia. Partly because of the Air Force itself, partly because of Washington, the airfleet shifted to match.

Today, US air power is optimized for counterinsurgencies, for long patrols in safe airspace, and for the fundamental assumption that America’s adversaries cannot compete with it in the skies. Until recently, the prevailing wisdom held that America’s future air-superiority needs could be handled by a couple of hundred stealthy fighters, that those same fighters were the best weapon for air-to-ground operations, and that no new adversary would be ready to challenge the US anytime soon.

Today, the US faces major-power competitors on multiple fronts. In a world where American air power could have to defend Europe against Russia, defend Taiwan against China, and defend Israel against Iran and its proxies all at once, the balance of power is shifting. America has allies to rely on, and it has very good aircraft. But splitting those aircraft across multiple hot zones while dealing with multiple kinds of threat is something the US is supposed to be good at, and it simply is not.

Focused on decades of asymmetrical war against insurgents, its budget consumed by the vampiric influence of costly projects like the F-35, the B-2 bomber, and the F-22, the Air Force has been caught lacking in a major way. The US Air Force is more than a match for China, but divide it into thirds. Even under perfect conditions, can sixty-odd F-22s, under a hundred F-35s, a couple of hundred F-16s, a handful of stealth bombers, and a severely reduced number of tankers and reconnaissance planes really provide the dominant win over China that the American people expect? It is not likely.

Hamstringing America’s ability to make up the gap, now as much as in recent decades, is the country’s seeming obsession with stealth aircraft. Stealth jets are very helpful for nations that can leverage them, but they are not everything. To operate stealthily at all, they must use internal weapons bays, which seriously limits both the number and size of the munitions they carry. They are also expensive, difficult to maintain and repair, and global air-defense systems are starting to catch up to them in some ways.

Stealth is important. Used right, it can decide the course of battles or perhaps even wars. But it is not everything.

The Air Force now appears to recognize that it is dealing with headwinds from multiple sources at once. It lacks critical funding. It has too many problems piling up simultaneously. And it has spent decades making decisions under a set of assumptions about the future, only to see those assumptions break apart at the seams.

Frankly, it is too big a set of obstacles to be solved by brute force. There is no version of the United States in which Social Security or Medicare is gutted to beef up the strength of the USAF. But forced to think critically about the assets it has, rather than relying on the magical appearance of new ones, the organization has begun to string together some real solutions, and at least in theory, they are starting to look pretty good.

New Problems, New Solutions

The Air Force cannot simply wave its hand and replace the inventory it has. It cannot bully other parts of the US government into fully funding NGAD or committing to all of the initiatives it wants. And it cannot recover the money already spent on research, development, procurement, maintenance, or training. Instead, its solutions will have to be tactical and strategic, using all the benefits and all the drawbacks of its current situation to become the fighting force its country now needs.

To illustrate the answer, begin with one particular piece of new technology: the F-15EX Eagle II. The Eagle II is a sort of rebirth project for America’s esteemed but aging F-15 Eagle. Capable of flying above Mach 2.5, around 2,800 miles per hour, the Eagle II can carry about 30,000 pounds of munitions, including more than twenty missiles or bombs, with a wide combat radius and a great deal more.

The un-stealthy Eagle II is not the only surprising aircraft the US Air Force is procuring. Look no further than the OA-1K Sky Warden, a prop plane the US worked hard to acquire in 2024. But unlike the Sky Warden, the F-15EX is intended to fly alongside hyper-modern fifth-generation fighters and even the NGAD, and it will be a major part of the arsenal for decades to come.

Congress is pushing the Air Force to acquire more of them, with a real possibility that the current projection of a bit over a hundred may only be the start.

The Eagle II is envisioned as what the USAF calls a missile truck, an aircraft that can carry a great deal of ordnance, of varying kinds depending on the mission, and ruin the day of whoever happens to be in its path. On paper, that approach suits the kind of war America just finished fighting, the kind that involves devastating the hideouts of terror organizations lacking the means to shoot down an aircraft. But although the Eagle II drew much of its design inspiration from those older wars, it is being procured at a time when that thinking has already changed. It is an un-stealthy, bellowing bull of an aircraft at a moment when America is contemplating how to face sophisticated rival militaries, and yet the nation’s military minds want more of them, not fewer.

Pair the Eagle II with the other weapons in America’s arsenal, and its usefulness begins to make far more sense. An F-35, carrying no more than four missiles or bombs internally, is not going to devastate many targets in a single run. But it can clear the way. Flying unseen through contested airspace, the F-35 can slip like a knife through enemy air defenses and launch precision attacks on the assets an enemy has standing guard.

That might be advanced fighters, ground-based air-defense systems, radar installations, or command-and-control aircraft. Whatever an adversary has waiting, stealth aircraft are the most likely to clear the way. All the while, they mark other targets and transmit precise data back to the rest of the force, providing real-time intelligence that is all but unmatched in today’s world.

Once that happens, aircraft like the Eagle II become far more useful. Using medium- to long-range munitions, they can loiter in areas where the now-destroyed front-line defenses can no longer touch them, but where other air-defense assets are too far away to reach. And it is not just the Eagle II. The same approach should work, at least in theory, with strategic bombers including the B-21 Raider, and with America’s other non-stealthy multirole aircraft like the F-16 and the Navy’s F/A-18.

The Aerial Quarterback and the Offensive Coordinator

High over the battlefield, we reach the assets most critical to this new approach. Sixth-generation aircraft like the NGAD, and potentially other platforms that use sixth-generation technologies such as the B-21 Raider, are special for many reasons. But perhaps the greatest is their ability to serve as a hub that processes incredible amounts of data and real-time battlefield intelligence.

To understand how this works, defense expert Alex Hollings of Sandboxx offers a useful analogy. The F-22 Raptor, America’s most sophisticated air-superiority jet at present, has an avionics suite that allows it to help other aircraft identify and destroy targets, keeping command and control over a battlefield in a way that lets it function as a sort of aerial quarterback. For those unfamiliar with American football, a quarterback commands and coordinates the team in real time, deciding where to exploit weaknesses in order to score.

If the Raptor is a quarterback, then the NGAD is expected to be more of an offensive coordinator, a figure positioned on the sidelines, or in this case out of the direct heat of battle, doing a great deal of advanced tactical thinking very quickly. Its job is to influence the entire game, or in this case, the entire battlespace.

With hyper-advanced sixth-generation aircraft in the skies, coordinating and maneuvering a combined swarm of piloted aircraft and drones in real time, the US gains a level of situational awareness unheard of in aerial warfare. Historically, adding many different types of aircraft, each in different mission roles working toward a common task, tends to make the whole mission harder. That is not the case when a data hub like the NGAD is involved.

Its sensor technology is purportedly able to detect and target enemy aircraft from extreme ranges and transfer that data to other pilots and drones near-instantaneously. The NGAD’s value, as currently drawn up, is not as a dogfighter or even a long-range air-superiority fighter in the conventional sense. It is meant to be a master tactician, not a piece of hardware that takes part in a fight, but a strange sort of consciousness that takes the other American aircraft in the sky and transforms them into a single, unified organism.

With that battlefield overwatch, the Air Force could leverage the potential of its various aircraft simultaneously while letting each focus on what it does best. Instead of expecting F-35 squadrons to spend their limited ordnance taking out an entire region’s military assets, they can focus on using stealth where it matters most: picking off enemy aircraft before being discovered, scoping out targets just minutes before the cavalry arrives, and surgically dismantling the systems that would stand against an air assault. Fourth-generation aircraft, rather than being held back by their lack of stealth, can be used more effectively in combat zones where stealth is no longer needed, relying on the awareness of a higher authority to guide their actions. Tankers, airlifters, early-warning and control planes, and more can all run more precise missions or fly safer routes, confident they are being watched over even in an austere environment.

Versatility as a Strategy, and a Cost Saver

Depending on the mission, this new approach grants the US matching versatility. If America launches an all-out attack on fortified enemy territory, it can leverage its stealth aircraft, then its missile trucks, then its heavy bombers in waves that would be nearly unstoppable for most modern militaries. If America needs to defend Poland and the Baltics against a Russian advance, it can better coordinate its defense and counterattacks over a wide area, using stealth aircraft when necessary and non-stealthy aircraft when possible, fighting individual air battles overseen by NGAD data hubs, all coordinating in real time for a continental defense. If the US needs to protect its homeland or guard secure airspace, it can do so without relying on costly stealth fighters, while still gaining the stealth capability and battlespace awareness that a few sophisticated command-and-control planes provide.

Just as critical is the possibility that this new approach would cost less, not more. In the case of the NGAD, using the aircraft in concert with a range of other platforms and loyal-wingman drones means that putting four, eight, or twelve NGADs into a single battle is overkill. You could do it, but the combination of America’s existing fighter assets plus the situational awareness a single, nearly invisible NGAD provides should be enough to overcome US adversaries for quite a while. Not only does that lower the number of NGADs needed, it buys the US valuable time to address other critical priorities.

Meanwhile, an Air Force that does not rely on stealthy F-35s for tasks where stealth is unnecessary can save on operating costs at a minimum, and could conceivably downsize the overall F-35 fleet, currently projected to include nearly 1,400 aircraft. Adopt an approach better at keeping America’s new B-21s protected in contested airspace, and it becomes more feasible to consider purchasing just a hundred for now, because they would have a higher chance of surviving if a crisis really did devolve into a costly war. Keep probing the budgetary benefits of the apparent shift, and the Air Force keeps getting chunks of money back, in ways that should let the Pentagon recover from its desperation mode and space out more affordable initiatives over the next decade or two, instead of attempting the Herculean and probably doomed task of getting everything done at once.

The Tech Behind the Shift

That is the what and the why of the Air Force’s emerging strategic shift, or at least how those in the unclassified world can best read the tea leaves to decipher decisions made behind closed doors. But the how matters too, because simply introducing individual new aircraft like the NGAD or the Raider does not tell the whole story. The individual technologies powering the shift are even more important.

Some, like the new advances in stealth, remain out of reach in the public domain. But the ones we do know about are very impressive, and suggest that if this is what the public knows, there is some seriously unbelievable work happening behind the scenes.

Start with the Mako, a missile that puts just about every fighter-carried munition in history to shame. Developed by Lockheed Martin, the Mako is a stand-off missile intended to strike naval and ground targets from very far away after being launched from the air. It is also hypersonic, able to fly at over five times the speed of sound. And it is not only incredibly fast, but highly maneuverable.

The combination of high speed and high maneuverability is thought to make it entirely capable of penetrating advanced air-defense systems, where interceptors are too slow to catch it and not maneuverable enough to chase it. Its exact top speed is unknown, but it can operate at, above, or below hypersonic speeds.

Crucially, the Mako is the first hypersonic weapon ever, from any country, able to fit inside the weapons bay of a fifth-generation fighter. That includes not just the F-35 but also the F-22, each of which could carry Mako missiles internally while maintaining their stealth. The Mako can also fly on the F-15, the F-16, the Navy’s F/A-18, almost certainly the Eagle II, and even the Navy’s P-8 Poseidon, derived from the Boeing 737.

It is the Mako that enables stealth fighters to so precisely and reliably devastate enemy air defenses, since the missiles can be carried right up to their targets, and by the time they begin their own hypersonic flight, it is already too late to stop them. That is a level of capability Russia and China cannot match. Both nations can launch hypersonic weapons, but neither can do so from an aircraft, let alone a stealth aircraft.

Also in weapons news is the AIM-260, the Joint Advanced Tactical Missile. It is a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile meant to take over for America’s current beyond-visual-range missile, the AIM-120 AMRAAM, and when it does, it will offer a major leap in capability. The most advanced AMRAAM offers a range of about ninety-five nautical miles, while the AIM-260 is expected to fire at a minimum range of about 110 nautical miles.

That is not only out of range but out of radar sight for most aircraft trying to hit back at the launching plane. And while the AMRAAM flies at Mach 4, the new missile flies at Mach 5. It carries far better onboard technology than even the newest AMRAAM versions, and it can fly with the F-22, the F-35, and the Eagle II.

To grasp what this missile can do, imagine a dozen Russian Su-27s flying in formation against three American warplanes: one F-22, one NGAD, and one Eagle II. The F-22 flies ahead undetected, marking every aircraft in the Russian squadron without being seen. It beams that data back to the NGAD, which presents a fully mapped, targeting-ready profile of the battlefield to the Eagle II, flying over a hundred miles away, well out of range of the Russian aircraft, carrying more than twenty air-to-air missiles that can attack at hypersonic speeds from that extreme distance, crossing it at Mach 5 in about a minute and a half.

With the F-22 and the NGAD lurking unseen at closer range to pick off any survivors, the Su-27 formation is dealt with in about two minutes. The AIM-260 is expected to enter service by the end of 2026.

Wiring the Legacy Fleet Together

Just as important as weaponry are the technologies that will make older fighters, bombers, support aircraft, and command-and-control planes compatible with the data-processing systems the NGAD, the Raider, and the F-35 carry aboard. One such item is the Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod, currently in use on America’s Stratofortress and Lancer bombers, the F-15E and F-16 fighters, and the A-10 attack aircraft. It has been in service for more than two decades, but recent upgrades vastly expand its ability to participate in data-sharing networks.

Today, the Sniper pod can commune not just with stealth aircraft but with other aircraft involved in an operation, and even ground-based assets like the HIMARS missile launcher, using encrypted systems compatible with what these less sophisticated platforms already carry. It is this capability that makes munitions like the AIM-260 so meaningful, all but guaranteeing that aircraft equipped for combat at stand-off range will receive the information that lets them use that capability.

Just as important as individual technologies are the changes in how the Air Force thinks about its aircraft. Take the idea of the missile truck, made possible by special pylon extenders that allow an aircraft to carry two, three, or four missiles or bombs on a hardpoint that would usually carry just one. The concept is already in use on the F-15EX Eagle II, but it can go further.

Consider the expected hardpoint expansions of the Navy’s P-8, which may receive more and more pylons over time. There is even room for some theoretical weirdness here. Take a pylon extender meant to fit four missiles on an Eagle II, then imagine how many you could mount on the wings of an extensively modified C-5 Galaxy.

A hundred? Two hundred? Turning single C-5s into missile trucks capable of taking down entire rival air forces from stand-off range is obviously not in the cards.

But the example illustrates just what the USAF could do if it keeps thinking outside the box with that new tool.

The versatile thinking goes much further. Defense analysts have proposed that the B-21 Raider could conceivably serve in the NGAD’s role, if NGAD were hypothetically cut or seriously scaled down, so long as no one expects the Raider to dogfight. The Raider design may also soon be adapted into America’s upcoming stealthy aerial-refueling tanker, currently designated the NGAS or KC-Z.

The Liberty Lifter proposal calls for seaplane airlifters that can double as mobile command posts on the water. F-35s are increasingly being adapted to serve a wide range of mission roles, including taking over the role the A-10 will eventually leave behind. And all these aircraft will merge with a fleet of unmanned drones, including not just the upcoming Loyal Wingman line of UAVs but potentially aircraft built on the technology the Air Force demonstrated in September 2023, when an AI-powered, autonomous, heavily modified F-16 proved capable of dogfighting a human pilot, ultimately going five for five in victories over the humans behind the stick.

The Digital Century Series Returns

Finally, Air Force officials have recently indicated that, at least with NGAD, they may revisit an idea once discussed for the program and then discarded: the Digital Century Series. The name is a play on America’s Century Series of the 1950s and 1960s, the F-100 through the F-106, which put small batches of each aircraft line into production one after another to cope with rapid technological advancement. For a time, the idea circulated around NGAD as a way to develop smaller batches of open-system, highly modular aircraft, each meant to serve only a decade or two, rather than trying to build an NGAD in 2020 that would still be useful in 2070.

Per recent reporting, the idea is making a comeback, with the potential to field new sixth-generation, and eventually seventh-generation, fighters every five to ten years. Not only would that keep the USAF versatile in its new capabilities and able to respond to new threats as they emerge, it would save additional costs, both on development and in procuring fighters that now only have to last a few years before being phased out. Expand that thinking across the Air Force’s new and developing arsenal, and the burden of 2020s development costs can be at least somewhat relieved, spread across several subsequent decades.

But Can It Work?

With all these changes in tactical and strategic thinking, all these new technologies, and very soon all these new aircraft, the most important question remains: will the changes actually work? As much as military leaders may want to impress on their subordinates that failure is not an option, that is simply not accurate. Failure is very much an option. If the Air Force has heaved itself into new ways of thinking and new approaches to warfare only to watch them all fail under pressure, that is an outcome America would like to avoid at all costs.

The new approach certainly has its naysayers. A large portion of the American military aerospace world still believes in the maxim of stealth above all, and strongly opposes any approach that would entrust responsibility to an aircraft that cannot stay hidden. Other detractors emphasize that the approach involves too many moving pieces, or that it relies on programs like NGAD that could still be slashed before even the end of this year.

Others point to the risk of adopting a strategy history has never validated, especially when America’s enemies seem more dangerous than ever. And still others worry that the budgetary spine of the Pentagon itself may snap under the pressure, knowing that after so many ambitious development programs have so consistently run over budget, an initiative of this size could lead to a financial catastrophe of similar proportion.

But while all those criticisms are fair, and all of them will need to be dealt with over time, the state of affairs matters for both proponents and detractors. The alternative to such a change is not a return to a status quo that is working just fine. The status quo in today’s US Air Force is unsustainable, weighed down by too many urgent projects pulling in too many directions, with no other way to lower the pressure except piecemeal cuts here and there. Make a big change, and a lot could go wrong.

But stay the current course, and make no mistake, a lot will go wrong.

The benefits go well beyond merely giving America a chance to avert catastrophe. An approach like this offers real potential to draw down costs, both by moderating existing or proposed programs instead of slashing them outright, and by spacing development and production costs across the coming decades instead of forcing a make-or-break moment in the 2020s. From a tactical and strategic standpoint, an Air Force that leans into versatility is certainly not a bad thing, and the thinking behind this particular interpretation of versatility appears sound.

The approach makes one key assumption that must hold true: that America’s stealth aircraft, its missile trucks and long-range munitions, its next-generation warplanes, and its information technology all remain potent threats for the near-to-mid future. So long as that holds, the approach should work very well.

The Competition, and the Deterrent

As for whether the USAF’s capabilities will be matched by its nearest competitors, that does not seem likely in a world where the US keeps improving rather than stopping in its tracks. China’s stealth fighters appear hamstrung by difficulties working out the stealth materials needed to absorb radar, and its purportedly upcoming stealth bomber, the H-20, is still nowhere to be found. Much of China’s air force is outdated, it has not been tested in real-world combat, and in any future conflict it would have to worry not just about the American Air Force but the Japanese and South Korean Air Forces too.

Russia has seen a number of new toys exposed as shadows of the wonder weapons they were hyped to be, like the poorly performing Kinzhal hypersonic-ish missile and the S-400 missile-defense system. Others have proven too precious or too broken to risk sending to the front, like the Su-57 fifth-ish-generation fighter. Still more appear to be little more than vaporware, like the Su-75 Checkmate, the Pak DP fighter, and Tupolev’s PAK DA stealth bomber.

Meanwhile, most of Iran’s and North Korea’s air arsenals consist of warplanes an F-22 could backhand into a different century, without any help from an NGAD, a missile truck, or anything else. Iran’s purported stealth fighter drone, the Qaher-313, has not appeared in public since a mock-up was lampooned by the foreign press in 2013.

From a strategic perspective, the US may even have less to worry about regarding rapidly evolving adversary capabilities that might catch up to and then surpass the USAF’s ongoing progress. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, America and its allies have increasingly heeded the wake-up call that major-power conflict remains a real possibility. In the years since, despite stop-and-start progress, NATO and America’s Pacific allies have worked hard to make war less likely, not more.

In Europe, NATO members are quickly raising spending and looking for ways to reinvigorate a sleepy arms industry, hoping that by the time Russia is ready to test NATO’s resolve, the US will be backed by a capable allied force. In the Pacific, the US is increasingly weaving a web of military cooperation around China, drawing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, and more.

While those war preparations are loud, and at times rightly worrying for the future, they are designed to lower the probability that war actually breaks out. Neither Russia, nor China, nor anybody else is going to willfully start a war against someone they believe is going to kick their asses, and the US and its allies are hard at work convincing both Russia and China that a royal ass-kicking is now back on the table. The evolving capabilities of the US Air Force are part of that same deterrent effort, and in fact one of its most important elements.

In any major-power war that does eventually break out, the USAF would be the tip of the spear. If it can show America’s adversaries that it, alone, packs too much of a punch to be overcome, then war is deterred before all the other factors are even taken into account.

In the coming years, public announcements around America’s air force are likely to be a mixed bag. Some programs will have their funding cut, a couple may even be slashed, and tough decisions will have to be made, no matter how this goes. But if the US Air Force is indeed committed to the changes it appears to be seeking, then that difficult news will be balanced by a great deal that would satisfy even America’s toughest war hawks. From technology to tactics to training and beyond, the United States Air Force has realized that change is on the horizon, and flying toward the horizon, at many times the speed of sound, is precisely what an air force is meant to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the US Air Force announce on February 12, 2024?

Together with the US Space Force, the USAF announced a raft of sweeping changes to reorient the service toward great-power competition. These included greater support for nuclear forces, expanding the ranks of technical personnel skilled in modern warfighting methods, large-scale exercises to prepare for major wartime operations, and a new emphasis on versatility, anchored by a new Integrated Capabilities Command.

Why is the NGAD program considered troubled?

The Next Generation Air Dominance program is meant to produce the world’s first sixth-generation fighter, but its year-over-year budgets are shrinking. Air Force leaders have implied that drastic options, including outright cancellation, may be on the table. More likely is a redesign to cut costs and reduce the number procured, with Secretary Kendall noting the redesign could eliminate adaptive cycle engines or even drop the piloted concept in favor of an unmanned one.

What is a missile truck, and how does the F-15EX fit in?

A missile truck is an aircraft that carries a large amount of ordnance and can devastate whatever is in its path. The un-stealthy F-15EX Eagle II, capable of flying above Mach 2.5 and carrying about 30,000 pounds of munitions including more than twenty missiles or bombs, is the prime example. In the new concept, stealth aircraft clear enemy defenses first, then missile trucks loiter safely and strike with medium- to long-range munitions.

What makes the Mako missile significant?

The Mako is a Lockheed Martin hypersonic stand-off missile that is highly maneuverable and able to penetrate advanced air defenses. Most importantly, it is the first hypersonic weapon from any country able to fit inside the internal weapons bay of a fifth-generation fighter, including the F-35 and F-22, allowing them to carry it while remaining stealthy. It can also be carried by the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, the Eagle II, and the P-8 Poseidon.

What is the Digital Century Series idea?

Named for America’s 1950s and 1960s Century Series of aircraft, the Digital Century Series envisions developing smaller batches of open-system, highly modular fighters meant to serve only a decade or two each, rather than building one aircraft expected to last fifty years. Recent reporting suggests it is making a comeback for NGAD, potentially fielding new sixth-generation and eventually seventh-generation fighters every five to ten years, which would also save development and procurement costs.

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