This year had its fair share of developments in air warfare, both in the United States and abroad.
In the US, the Air Force notched a number of firsts, like the flight of drone wingmen and an award for a sixth-gen fighter. A funding boost provided by reconciliation was also critical for infusing cash into top priorities like ramping up munitions production.
But other events were more turbulent. Before the calendar flipped to 2025, China revealed its own next-gen aircraft designs, kicking off a race that Beijing could pull ahead in, as the Air Force’s top acquisition executive warned Breaking Defense in January. Then over the course of the year, both of the service’s top uniformed officials were ousted. Key venues like the AFA conference were devoid of attendees in the wake of DOGE executive orders. Programs like the Sentinel ICBM experienced unwelcome discoveries — perhaps supporting a case for a new official to oversee some of the service’s top efforts — and others like the E-7 Wedgetail faced the axe.
[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense reporters look back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2025 and look forward to what 2026 may hold.]
But even among all this disruption, there was a good deal of continuity. Unlike sister services in the Army and Navy, the Air Force didn’t execute any sweeping overhauls. Instead, new service leadership in the Trump administration actually opted to kill far-reaching reforms initiated by Biden appointees. And after spending fights and program reviews, most of the service’s top priorities emerged fairly unscathed — Wedgetail excluding, although Congress may still have something to say about that.
One program that perhaps exemplifies 2025 best is the F-35. Despite fears that figures like Elon Musk could erode support for procurement of the jet, the Pentagon held fast, though at a somewhat lower level in fiscal 2026. Facing geopolitical headwinds, customers like Denmark — whose territory of Greenland has been threatened with takeover by President Donald Trump — have expanded their buys. And even in the face of fresh setbacks this year, service leaders have doubled down on the stealth fighter, describing it in a recent report as the “the foundation of the USAF fighter force structure.”
Now that we’ve reached the end of the year, it’s worth looking back at some of the top stories that stood out in 2025. In semi-particular order, here are five of them.
Hands-down the biggest air warfare story of the year was the award of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance sixth-generation fighter, billed by the service as critical for countering new threats posed by China. Beyond fielding what officials say is a critical new capability, the Air Force’s selection of Boeing to build what is now called the F-47 provided a crucial jolt to the planemaker’s beleaguered defense business. (A special thanks to Valerie Insinna for getting this story across the finish line, since I was on a plane over the Pacific without Wi-Fi when Boeing was announced as the winner.)
The contract award also ended uncertainty introduced during the Biden administration, where officials paused the program to gather more analysis. As was first reported by Breaking Defense, that process ultimately supported the fighter’s requirements, likely strengthening the case to award its contract.
But the priority on the Air Force fighter — featuring a splashy Oval Office ceremony with timeless quotes from Trump himself — may be to the detriment of its Navy counterpart. Over the objections of the Navy and Congress, Trump appointees are holding up the F/A-XX program, which Breaking Defense reported is now a dogfight between Boeing and Northrop Grumman. The main objection? Pushing F/A-XX forward, the White House has said, would put F-47 at risk.
The ousting of former Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin caught many in the Air Force world by surprise, particularly after he survived a slew of firings of top officials in February that included the service’s No. 2 officer. But grumblings within the Air Force about a sweeping overhaul headed by Allvin reportedly helped drum the chief out of the building.
Speculation abounded about who might replace Allvin, and a seemingly unlikely candidate quickly emerged in Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach — reported here with a byline trio including Valerie Insinna and Aaron Mehta — who had until then planned to retire after leading Air Combat Command. His nomination then appeared stalled after a strange and unprecedented social media campaign boosted Global Strike chief Gen. Thomas Bussiere instead. But Wilsbach eventually broke through and was confirmed in October, leaving the service to once again be helmed by a fighter pilot.
The Air Force’s troubled Sentinel program has led many critics to wonder whether prolonging the service’s Minuteman III nuclear ICBM fleet was feasible after all, particularly after a watchdog report found the existing missiles could be extended to 2050. Nevertheless, the Air Force is moving ahead with closing Minuteman silos to hasten the Sentinel’s transition, which Breaking Defense first reported in this story based on comments made at a local town hall.
The Air Force moved ahead with the closure, located at a base in Wyoming, despite major disruptions in the Sentinel plan like the need to dig hundreds of new silos. To the Sentinel program’s critics, shuttering the silo was a surprising move that raised questions about the Air Force’s overall strategy. As the Federation of American Scientists’ Jon Wolfsthal told Breaking Defense, “No one seems to have a sense of what the full plan is.”
OK, so this story is not really about air warfare, but it’s going on my list anyway.
Many officials make different claims about what DOGE, the initiative to slash federal spending previously led by Elon Musk, actually managed to save taxpayers. That’s why Breaking Defense and the American Enterprise Institute teamed up to analyze the Pentagon’s FY26 budget documents to find savings spelled out in black-and-white. The documents, for their part, show $11.1 billion in savings, largely stemming from moves like cutting consultants and travel.
But it’s an open question whether all that money — potentially totaling up to $30 billion that the Pentagon says was “realigned” — reshuffled by DOGE will actually result in greater efficiency. Experts warn that a chaotic campaign to shrink the government, featuring a steep reduction in staffing levels composed of some of the federal government’s most seasoned workers, could render many of those savings illusory.
Sometimes schedule slips for key new weapon systems are publicly broadcast in watchdog reports by the Government Accountability Office. But other times, issues with top projects like the F-35 are kept largely under wraps, making the letter from Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet, reported in this story by Valerie Insinna and myself, a rare insight into programmatic woes.
It’s still not clear what exactly the status is of a radar upgrade for the F-35. But the plane has more immediate problems: despite a claim from company officials over the summer that a critical upgrade has been completed, the Pentagon has still not cleared newly manufactured fighters for combat.