Keynote Address—The State of the Air Force
September 22, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Gen. David W. Allvin:
Good morning. I didn’t want to do the Air Force/Space Force thing. Secretary already drew on that, but we got you outnumbered, Salty, but you got some great spirit there as well. Hey, thanks, Bernie. Really appreciate the intro, and thanks to Burt Field and everyone here at AFA for putting together what I know is going to be another spectacular, spectacular symposium. So we were–I think we’ve got a little problem with the monitors here. No signal, it says. Technology. Salty, did you do that to me? No. We’re good. I was here about six months ago–not here, I was on a stage like this in Denver, and I was talking about our Air Force and the unique contributions that our Air Force makes to the nation, the full spectrum and the full range of options that we can provide. And I tried to put some imagery to it, so I’ll let you sort of take a listen to me about six months ago.
Video:
“Here’s something that is unique to the Air Force in my mind. This range of options, this full spectrum is something we do better than anyone else, and in this time, we definitely need it. The Air Force is sort of like a great boxer. So we’ve got the ability to pop the jab, and that might give them a shot in the face, and they may think, “Hmm, maybe I might want to rethink my position.” And you know what that is? Maybe we’re reestablishing deterrence. Yes. But if not, we’re already back in fighting stance. And you know what? We haven’t committed hundreds of thousands of forces over there getting entangled in something that may take us years to get out of and loss of blood and treasure.”
Gen. David W. Allvin:
So an interesting concept, some nice imagery to try and describe this concept. “Okay, Chief, that’s interesting, but can you give me an example maybe of that?” Well, thank you for asking, and yes, we can. This summer, President Trump asked our Air Force to do something that was dangerous, complex, and consequential. And we followed through and did it. Operation Midnight Hammer. This was the largest operational kinetic employment of B-2s in their history. Over 100 aircraft, thousands of man-hours in planning and execution. This took Airmen from across the bomber force, the fighter force, the mobility force. It took ISR, it took command and control, all to come together to put almost a half a million pounds of destruction exactly where we wanted it. And it took place across multiple MAJCOMs, and it took place across the globe. And when that happened and hit the target over and over and over again, that was your Air Force following through. And then, when the bombers came off the target and we all had left the contested airspace, it was a bit of an exhale, but we weren’t done yet. We were still 17 hours away from completion, and that mission was not done until every aircraft had returned home and every crew was back in the position where they started. And then what happened? Nothing. Not exactly nothing. There was a retaliatory strike, and we bravely defended it. But about 30 hours after this, President Trump declared that there was a ceasefire, and the 12-day war was over. We didn’t have a surge or mobilization or preparing our force for a protracted conflict in the Middle East. We reestablished deterrence, and we were ready to go. But you know what? That’s not enough. It’s not just the precision of the weapons and the great capabilities that we brought to bear. That was amazing, but it took a distant second to the professionalism and the accomplishments of our Airmen. It was a complex, imaginative mission that was designed, but with that complexity came unforeseen issues that came up in front of the Airmen over and over and over again. And in a story that will never really truly be told in public, our Airmen were unbelievable. Time after time, they assessed the risk, they understood their part of the mission, and they knew what it was going to take to get it done, and they courageously did that. That’s following through. That’s your Air Force following through. But you know, it’s not enough just to be able to stick the jab. You’ve got to be able to let your adversary know you can put them on the canvas. So how do you do that? I’m glad you asked, because we did that again. Within two weeks of Operation Midnight Hammer, your United States Air Force had redeployed, reset, pivoted, and led the largest U.S. Air Force-led exercise in the Indo-Pacific since the Cold War. It was amazing. I’m going to let the pictures do the talking. Now what set this exercise apart was the scope and the scale and the complexity. Again, transitioning from the types of fights we’ve done to the types of fights we don’t want to have to do, but need to prevail if we do. The size, the scale, the complexity. There were lots of elements of this that enabled our Airmen to learn new things. We aren’t white-carding logistics like we used to. In this exercise, we didn’t start the exercise in the middle of the fight. We’ve got to be able to get to the fight to see if we can win the fight. And this provided realistic challenges for all of our Airmen to overcome.
Video:
What we’ve learned that are going to come out of REFORPAC is command and control is inherently difficult, and the fog and friction of war, especially when you add in the logistics, are paramount to overcome. So from our lowest Airmen, they had to struggle through, “What do you do without parts? What do you do without material?” And REFORPAC allowed us the ability to make mistakes and learn from them very quickly. So that opportunity to learn, iterate, and execute in one fell swoop is worth its weight in gold, and this exercise provides it.
Gen. David W. Allvin:
Learn, iterate, execute, make mistakes, move those lessons forward. This was impressive. It also, beyond the Airmen looking at challenges they hadn’t seen, it provided some great leadership opportunities. When you’re having to make leadership decisions with uncertain information, maybe not always clear guidance, or when the situation changes so rapidly, you can’t do that in a classroom. You’ve got to do that in the scenario, and we had some great leadership training opportunities as well.
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We are able to really tackle real-world requirements a lot more effectively. I haven’t had an opportunity like this to really lead an exercise, especially to this scale and to this magnitude. Our wing leadership entrusted me with the opportunity to lead so many people. Something that our team was really good at was just adapting, listening to their feedback, and providing the support they needed in a timely manner.
Gen. David W. Allvin:
Entrusting and empowering our leaders, giving the opportunity to lead and make decisions now. This was another advantage of this exercise. And you saw 15,000-plus Airmen coming from all over the globe, coming together to learn together in a new situation. Again, this is something that we haven’t had a lot of experience in.
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Day-to-day change since REFORPAC started is really just being able to think on our feet, being able to adapt to sudden changes, overcome adversity, work out of a different theater. We’ve kind of brought in the total force. We’re working reserves, guard, active duty. A lot of young Airmen, this is their first time working with sister units, working outside of their home base. They’ve really just gelled together.
Gen. David W. Allvin:
Coming from all over, first time away from your base, first-time opportunities, learning on the fly. That’s Master Sergeant Matt Dearth. I think Matt actually might be here today. Matt, are you in the audience? If so, give me a hoot so I can look at you and stand up. There he is over there. I was going to say, if not, can somebody just hoot and I’ll call you Matt? Master Sergeant Dearth, good to see you. The interesting thing about Matt, many interesting things, but sort of cool. The day that Matt achieved his first rank as an Airman in our United States Air Force was the same day that his dad sewed on Chief Master Sergeant in our United States Air Force. So that’s awesome. That’s a full circle moment. This is family business. Matt, good to see you here. Airmen coming from all around the world, total force, coming together to learn for the first time. That’s great in an exercise. That’s great for learning. But you’ve heard me say it before, that is unsat for combat. We can’t have our Airmen walking into a fight in the complexity that we expect and have them untrained and learning on the fly. About a year ago when I was talking to you on this stage, I introduced you to a guy named Colonel Brett Cassidy who was standing up the 11th Air Task Force, trying to gel that unit to understand what types of training they would need to be able to deploy in an environment like this. And the 11th Air Task Force was there in REFORPAC.
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Air Task Forces, like the 11th Air Task Force, are critical because they help us glean the lessons and observations necessary to continue improving our force generation concepts, ultimately to help make sure that the future combat wings are designed and sourced, going through training and ready to get after missions that help our joint force, joint partners, and the combatant commanders that need them in theater.
Gen. David W. Allvin:
That’s the key. This is about putting together a force presentation, a force generation, to fit into what the joint force commander and the combatant commanders are going to need. And the lessons that we learn through this Air Task Force, on the way to what the joint force is going to ask us to do in 12 months from now, which is deliver the first combat wing for their force deployment, guys like Brett Cassidy and the team are putting together the lessons that are going to make sure we have the right number, the capacity, the right skill sets to meet the mission. So that concept is moving forward, and we are meeting the adversary where they may be. So organizing, training, equipping for that. This was one of many things that happened in this department level exercise. We got to experiment with things. We’re looking at now longer endurance missions. Once we got the air refueler, it sort of wasn’t the deal about how long can the airplane be in the air. It’s become how long can the human perform. So we’re experimenting with that. We took our longest JASM shot in this department level exercise. We started to integrate the 613th Air Operations Center and the 618th Air Operations Center, and our understanding while the fight may be in the theater, it has huge global implications. We’ve got to link those two C2 elements together. We rung out agile combat employment like we have not done before, doing new operations, hot pit refueling, quick turns with nations and at air bases that we hadn’t done before. We put our money where our mouth was. I told you a year ago we were going to start working on an inspection regime from unit efficiency to mission effectiveness, and we did several combat readiness inspections during the department level exercise. We certified a joint task force for General Schneider as JTF Air for PACAF. We did a lot of things and experimented and moved out. Here’s something else, though. We failed. We made some mistakes. We found some shortfalls and gaps. And if you don’t think that that’s the most important part, you’re missing it. Because after all the money that we spent, after all the resources, after all the planning, after all the execution, if all we did was just go and validate things we already knew, it might not have been the best use of our resources. So we did. We stressed the system. And we know where we fell short. And we know the capabilities we needed before, the TTPs we needed to advance. We learned a lot. So failure is good in training. It’s not in execution. And so we’re taking those lessons. And as an enterprise, we owe it to our Airmen to follow through on those and have the enterprise solve some of those gaps, fix some of those shortfalls. And in the meantime, we still have the secret weapon. That’s our individual Airmen who are smart, who are innovative, who see the same challenges that we do. And while we’re working hard to fix them as an enterprise, our Airmen are trying to come up with solutions on their own. Here’s an example of a fixed-wing air-launched counter-UAS ordnance, FALCO. Now this idea was born in a weapons and tactics conference like five, six years ago when our Airmen understood that the premium on our munitions is going to continue to grow and the stockpile isn’t growing along with it. So trying to find better ways to have a different effector against a different target. How do they do that? This concept was given one of the top tips there at WEB-TAC, but they didn’t have a material solution at the time. And then when Russia invaded Ukraine and drones started proliferating across the battle space and we started getting more labs and shops involved in how we do it, we sort of glommed on to the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System program where they found that material solution they were missing before in the form of a hydro rocket and something you put on it to make it more of a precision weapon. And our Airmen said, “I got this.” They grabbed that, said, “We can integrate it on the F-15.” Within a month that was integrated on the F-15E. And now for less than 10% of the cost of an M9X, you can put a precision kill on the proliferation of these one-way attack UAVs. And when you put 42 of them on one F-15E, now you’re bending the cost curve. Now you’re preserving from some of that high-end kit. Now you’re getting the capability mix that we need. These are our Airmen figuring out what we’re trying to figure out in the enterprise. We owe them everything we have. Command and Control. This thing called Nightmare. Cool names, right? Next Generation Information Technology for Mobility Readiness Enhancement. That’s a lot of words strung together that says, “The air mobility fleet is not connected.” And it hasn’t been. Why hasn’t it been? Well, when we built these systems, when we built the platforms, we didn’t have a full appreciation for the premium that we would put on integration. We built them with the KPPs having to do with range and payload and sealing and all these sort of things. We didn’t think about that element of it. We’re working on that now as an enterprise. But in the meantime, guys like Colonel Gio Monaco and his team, whose witnesses not only from the flight deck but in the C2 arena in the 618th AOC, said, “We’ve got to find a solution.” So using commercial off-the-shelf technology, using AI tools, using some smart people, putting together this platform they call Nightmare, able to fuse the right information and aggregate it from intelligence, weather, air traffic control, operational chat rooms, put it all together, put the algorithms on, AI tools, and now we have more situational awareness on the flight deck to make good decisions in the middle of the mission. Because as the mobility fleet improves, it doesn’t just improve the mobility mission, it is integral to improving the entire combat mission. And these are our Airmen figuring it out, while we work hard to figure it out as an institution. We’ve got great Airmen too that were just coming in to do whatever they’re asked, and maybe it might be something different than what they thought they were going to do. Airmen like Garrett Vance, two and a half years ago, some law enforcement background, decided he wanted to serve his country and maybe build his law enforcement bona fides. So he joins our Air Force and becomes a defender. Probably didn’t think that within two and a half years he was going to be doing this.
Video:
So while we were taking some TBMs and we had our heart rate up, we had a swarm of six Group 3 drones. They went out and they were able to down five of the six. Ultimately they left that drone to us as it was closing onto our position. So that’s when our protocols start. The nerves start to settle in and you have to resort back to your training. Within five nautical miles is when we will engage.
Gen. David W. Allvin:
And engage he did. And in that, Airman First Class Vance became the first U.S. Air Force defender to put a kinetic kill on a drone using the Coyote system. Also, did you notice the way he said it when he said, “Hey, they left that last drone to us”? It’s almost like he was thanking them. “Hey, thanks, because I want to take part of the whoop-ass too, right?” So it was great. These are the Airmen that we have coming in. And they keep coming in. Secretary talked about us making our recruiting goals. Yeah, we did. We crushed it this year. And we have a delayed entry program now where we’ve got Americans lining up and signing up. Our delayed entry program numbers are at 18,000 and growing. We haven’t seen that since 2012. They’re joining because they want to be part of a winning team. They’re joining because they want to do something great. They’re joining because this is a fantastic Air Force. So here’s what we owe them. We still need to follow through. So when they come in and they commit to this force, it is a force that is ready. That is ready to fight. So we will continue to push for the resources that we need, not just to recover readiness. Man, we’ve got to grow readiness. And what does that mean? That means we’ve got to continue to advocate for the resources to put more parts on the shelf, to put more maintainers on the flight line, to put more velocity through our depots, to put more aircraft availability in the hands of our Airmen, to put more flying hours to ensure our crews are ready and continue that virtuous cycle but in an upward spiral. That’s what we owe them. That’s what we owe them. And that’s our commitment to the Airmen in the formation and those that are coming in. Can’t just look at today, though. We’ve got to look at tomorrow. So we’ve got to look at how we’re doing in securing dominance for tomorrow. The Secretary talked about it. The B-21 program is going exceptionally well. Second aircraft, we’ve doubled our fleet at Edwards. Now we’re going to do munitions testing. We’re going to expand the envelope. We’re going to accelerate fielding of that platform. And at the same time, working operator, technical person, acquirer, requirer, to build the sustainment concepts to where when we put this in the field in numbers, we’ll be able to keep the high rate of operations that the nation is going to need for this platform to maintain our dominance well into the future. I’m always excited to talk about the collaborative combat aircraft program. Again, this is something that 10 years ago when I was on the staff, I wrote when I was writing the Air Force Future Operating Concept. We didn’t call them CCAs, but we didn’t know that they would eventually be called that. Here they are. And 17 months ago, we did the down select to Andro and General Atomics. And in that 17 short months, they have aggressively pursued a program. One of them is flying and one of them is imminent. And with the government reference architecture, we’re building the autonomy to go into those platforms. At the same time, we’re building the platforms. And at the same time, out in Nevada, we’ve got great Airmen figuring out the operational concepts, logistics concepts, the sustainment concepts, how we’re going to operate this in a way that fits into the next generation air dominance family of systems. Last but certainly not least, in that family of systems, after years of work, hundreds of test hours, thousands of years of man years in the lab, the president announced the F-47 as the sixth gen fighter. It’s the platform that along with all of the rest of the systems is going to ensure dominance into the future. We’ve got to go fast. I tell you, team, it’s almost 2026. The team is committed to get the first one flying in 2028. In the few short months since we made the announcement, they are already beginning to manufacture the first article. We’re ready to go fast. We have to go fast. And if you’re skeptical, check this out. That’s the shop floor in St. Louis in Boeing when the CEO, Steve Parker, announced. The president was going to announce that day that Boeing had won. Those aren’t people who just show up to work. Those are people who are committed to do something great for the nation. And there are Americans on shop floors, industry all across our country, in the shop floors, in the labs, out on the flight lines doing the test that want to put together the dominance for the future. We’re gaining momentum. So we’re following through. We’re following through on bringing in the right Americans. We’re following through on ensuring and advocating for the readiness that we need to be able to fight today, to demonstrate we can pop the jab and we can put them on the canvas. We’re paying attention to tomorrow. Plan’s sort of in place. We’re ready to keep moving. Here’s my question. Is it enough? Are we going fast enough? Are we reaching deep enough? There’s a lot of change going on right now. There’s a lot of change going on right now. And it’s perfectly natural to say, let’s catch our breath a minute. Let’s sort of take stock of things. But in this environment, with the consequences on the other side of it, we have to beware of the familiar. Be cautious about the warm blanket of the comfortable. We’ve got to watch out for that siren song of, well, it’s the way we’ve always done it, and the tried and true has always worked. Because you know what? That may not be good enough. That just may not be good enough. Because the adversary is not taking a knee. They’re not stopping and saying, well, maybe if the U.S. slows down, we’ll slow down too. Maybe we can take a knee. That’s not what they’re doing. What do you think they did when they saw this? You think they saw that and they said, OK, we give up. You got us. We’re going to stop hiding things. No, you can believe they probably got after immediately how to make it harder, how to make it more complex. And we’ve got to respond to that. So when the president asked tonight, next week, next year, next decade, can you still do that? We have to be able to say, hell, yes, we can. We’ve got to follow through on that. That’s what’s at stake. Great exercise. Great lessons that we have currently observed. We will not reach the potential of these things until we take these lessons and we apply them. And we apply them in our budgets. We apply them in our tactics, techniques, and procedures. We apply them in our training. We apply them in our doctrine. And we make sure that these are not just one-offs, but exercises that really test us. These are the norm, not the exception. And as we look into the future, when we develop all of the next generation capabilities, we can’t get enamored with the platforms, not just the weapons and the weapon systems. We’ve got to understand systems over platform. It’s the things that link them together that makes it work. It’s resilient basing. It’s survivable refueling. It’s long-range kill chains against which we’re going to definitely depend on our brothers in the Space Force. It’s all of those things together that are going to ensure just beyond, well beyond the platforms. That’s what we need to maintain focus on. Last again, are we moving fast enough? How fast is fast enough? That’s what we have to ask ourselves. And if we’re getting comfortable, we need to check ourselves. Because you know what? We use terms about speed. I’ve used it. You can check my speeches. I’ve used terms like, “We need to move out at the speed of relevance.” That briefs well. It’s a nice phrase, “at the speed of relevance.” I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m not sure what the hell that means. Last time I checked, our mission statement doesn’t say, “Fly, fight, and be relevant.” Last time I checked, our mission says, “Fly, fight, and win air power anytime, anywhere.” So if you want to know what the pace is, that’s the pace. We have to move out at the pace to win. If we’re not getting there, then we need to find another gear. But I’m an optimist. And I know that we got this. Because we have Airmen coming into our formation and in our formation that are talented, skilled, innovative, ready, want to do something great for their country. Want to lead and be led for what the nation asks. And with them, we’ve got industry ready to build the things we need. We’ve got established industry, growing industry, aspiring industry. We’ve got entrepreneurs. We’ve got people in small shops wanting to be a part of our Air Force to deliver what the nation needs. And what the nation needs is one Air Force, integrated, aligned, focused, ready to fight. The nation needs more Air Force. More capability, more capacity, more options for the President. Your nation needs your Air Force moving out at a pace to win. Thank you.