But the Oct. 7 crisis, which spiraled into a war now on the cusp of its second year, illuminated fresh lessons in emergency response and threat avoidance as U.S. Transportation Command scrambled to protect American troops in the Middle East, initiate aid airdrops, and keep ships moving through the region’s waterways, Van Ovost told reporters Sept. 17 at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference here.

“With any crisis, the three things I look at [are], what’s my posture, what’s my capacity to respond, and how do I command and control and integrate into the joint force commander’s needs?” she said. “I think we did a really good job.” 

The time crunch forced TRANSCOM to prioritize what mattered most—in this case, loading Patriot air defense missile systems onto several C-17 Globemaster III airlifters and getting them “up and radiating,” Van Ovost said.

While the U.S. military needed about a dozen C-17s to rush troops and equipment to the region, logistics planners soon learned that shipping the most critical piece—air defenses—would only require about seven jets. So TRANSCOM revamped its plans to instead put the basics into theater first and worry about sending extra generators and other equipment later, Van Ovost said. 

That scramble came as the U.S. rushed extra military aid to Israel, including ammunition and Iron Dome interceptors, while American combat units deployed across U.S. Central Command to prepare for the possibility of a wider war.

“We learned that we could actually repackage something on the fly and get capabilities sooner,” Van Ovost said. “I’ve turned to the services and said, ‘That’s an example of how to ‘deploy to employ’ in a very short period of time. I promise you I’ll come back and get the rest.’” 

That approach could become a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s effort to inject more flexibility into its deployments and use limited resources more judiciously, known as “agile combat employment.” Those plans, which span ideas from training troops to handle multiple jobs at once to launching operations away from large centralized bases, aim to make American forces harder to target and more resilient under attack.

Months of unrelenting attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on commercial shipping vessels and U.S. military assets—namely, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier—also forced the U.S. to get creative to ensure commercial goods and military materiel could reach their destinations.

TRANSCOM “immediately” began meeting with its commercial sealift partners and sent a team of tactical advisors to the Navy’s Middle East headquarters in Bahrain, Van Ovost said.

“They set up a crisis node for all of our commercial partners to give them information: Should they come in through the Suez Canal? Should they go around the Cape [of Good Hope]? Are they coming out of the Persian Gulf? … What’s the threat?” she said. 

Then the U.S. began orchestrating convoys and meeting up with commercial vessels to protect them as they passed. That built on years of training commercial companies to zigzag at sea to become more difficult to target, among other force protection measures, Van Ovost said. 

Iran-backed Houthi rebels had targeted more than 70 vessels with missiles and drones between October 2023 and mid-July 2024, seizing one vessel and sinking two, the AP reported.

Adding tactical advisers and communications equipment to commercial shipping let crews speak to U.S. destroyers more easily without the typical maritime signaling.

That assistance underscored a difficult point: “We learned that choke point, as small as it is, if you have a persistent threat, it can take a lot of resources to move stuff through,” Van Ovost said. 

Those lessons on flexibility and situational awareness echo what TRANSCOM has learned in the first two years of Russia’s war in Ukraine as well. 

Asked what she believes is the most difficult piece of equipment the U.S. has shipped to Ukraine, Van Ovost pointed to ammunition. The State Department said Sept. 6 the U.S. has sent nearly 100,000 rounds of long-range artillery and nearly 250,000 anti-tank munitions to Ukraine so far, among more than $25 billion in other weapons, aircraft, tanks, and other materiel.

“We did move a lot of hazardous [material], from a depot on a road, to an airport, or a seaport, to a port, to a train, to a new way to get into Ukraine,” Van Ovost said. “I think the hardest thing was linking all those pieces together, because nobody wanted to stockpile anywhere.” 

That reflects a key concern of agile combat employment, which aims to preposition equipment in and around potential war zones without leaving it vulnerable to attack. Van Ovost said the U.S. is learning from Ukraine’s ability to adapt and move military shipments across the country while under fire every day.

Toting large quantities of explosives across the U.S. and Europe has posed another unique challenge, the four-star said. Ports limit how many explosives can travel through at a given time to lessen the risk of a deadly accident, forcing Ukraine’s benefactors to rush aid swiftly but methodically.

“If a train slowed down somewhere, we knew about it: ‘Should we go to another seaport instead of this seaport?’” Van Ovost said. “We’re constantly looking at those things.”

The Pentagon needs to boost its investment in data-crunching and communications tools that can give commanders real-time insights into where people and equipment are at any given time, fuel levels, and other critical aspects of the supply chain.

Air Mobility Command has laid the groundwork for broad adoption of comms kits on transport and tanker jets with its “25 in ’25” initiative, meant to add those kits to 25 percent of the mobility fleet by 2025. It will fall short of that goal, however.

“That’s not where I wanted it to be,” Van Ovost said of funding for modern communications tools. “We’ll continue to request that, if we’re going to fight … in a contested environment, I’ve got to have the connectivity to do that.”

The first operational aircraft will be delivered to AFSOC within months, but the world into which the command will welcome its militarized propeller-driven Air Tractors is markedly different from that of even a few years back, when the Air Force and U.S. Special Operations Command developed the requirements for a manned, lightweight, low-cost combat scout craft to do light attack, close air support, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance for counterinsurgency missions, replacing the U-28 Draco and the MC-12W Liberty. 

SOCOM selected Sky Warden—an Air Tractor AT-802U cropduster modified for military use by L3Harris —in August 2022 with plans to buy 75 aircraft, but that plan was cut back to 62 aircraft earlier this year.

Delays followed. The first production aircraft was supposed to be delivered in October 2023, but Conley said Sept. 18 that he is now anticipating delivery in “the first quarter of [calendar year] ’25.”  

“I think all new technology, new airframes, there’s always a little bit of a delay, they learn as they go,” Conley told reporters. He added that he’s seen “nothing that has me concerned with cost or delays,” beyond the lack of operational aircraft. “Once I have that, I’ll be more comfortable,” he said. 

Pilots are familiarizing themselves now with a pair of standard issue Air Tractor 802Us at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Okla., Conley said. Those aircraft have none of the modifications L3Harris is installing on the Air Force planes, AFSOC confirmed. 

As the Air Force gears up for peer competition in the Pacific, some have questioned the need for Armed Overwatch in that part of the world, but Conley suggested AFSOC will be inventive in applying the asset to all manner of scenarios.

“Once we get the aircraft and we start flying it, our crew members and our maintainers will figure out novel ways that it will be relevant in the future fight as well as the current one,” Conley said. “I tell my team every day, the Pacific is incredibly important to us for all the reasons [Secretary Frank Kendall] has said: China, China, China. We get it. But we’ve also got the rest-of-the-world mission that I’m responsible for, as well, and I want to have all the cards I can play to fight wherever they need us to.” 

Just as AFSOC injected new applicability into the venerable C-130 by converting the cargo carriers into gunships like the AC-130, Conley sees an adaptable future ahead for the Air Tractors. 

“I think it still provides a cost-effective close air support platform, which is one of the missions that it was designed for,” he said. “It’s still going to provide an ISR capability. But as we move forward, I think there’s opportunity to look at it against novel mission sets.” 

That could include signals and electronic intelligence, Conley suggested, as well as crisis response, provided AFSOC can find a way to rapidly dismantle, transport, and reassemble the aircraft. 

“What I’m telling industry right now is I need them to give me operational aircraft on time and on cost, and then the pathfinding mindset of folks at AFSOC will figure out what to do with it moving forward again,” he said. 

Conley faces renewed scrutiny of the program after the General Accountability Office issued a new, mostly classified report Sept. 5 reiterating concerns first expressed in December 2023 that SOCOM failed to justify the need for 75 planes and urged the Pentagon to slow down purchases until the command completed a comprehensive analysis.

SOCOM’s decision to cut the buy to 62 aircraft was disclosed in the president’s 2025 budget request, the result of “resource constraints” rather than a broader change in plans, the command said at the time. Conley said this month that he still supports a fleet of 75 OA-1K aircraft, justified by the intended mission set and unstated potential future uses.

“It is possible that we don’t buy those 75 in the same time frame that we wanted to,” he said. “But that’s still our requirement.”

Ulmer, speaking with Air & Space Forces Magazine at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, said he couldn’t provide the specific rate at which Lockheed is delivering its stored F-35s, but said “it’s going well. It’s going to take us 12-18 months to get those aircraft and [the] backlog out.”

Eighteen months is longer than the Government Accountability Office estimated in May. The sequence of delivery has been approved by the users, Ulmer said.

Lockheed has declined to say exactly how many F-35s went into storage during the delivery pause, but it is likely 100 or so. One of them had the distinction of becoming the 1,000th delivery when it was sent to the 115th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard at Truax Field, Wisc., in July.

Unlike previous milestones like the 100th F-35 produced or the 100th F-35 delivered to the Air Force, there was no public announcement or ceremony at the time. Lockheed Martin’s Director of Operations Frank A. St. John noted that 1,000 fighters had been delivered in an interview with CNBC, but did not say where it had gone.

The 1,000th airframe delivered was not necessarily the 1,000th produced. The fighters are not being delivered in the order that they were built, Ulmer said, but are being mixed with deliveries of fresh-off-the-line airplanes. This approach causes “less disruption” to the factory routine of building, testing, and delivering the jets.

“We don’t want to disrupt the flow,” he said.

When they went to storage, the jets weren’t sealed up and simply parked, Ulmer said. Typically, each jet receives four checks when it rolls out of the factory; two each by Lockheed and two each by the customer. When the stored jets were completed, they got one check each from the company and the customer, and only need one more check each, Ulmer said.

“They were in warm storage” with occasional power-ons, he said. “It’s not like we weren’t taking care of those airplanes.”

The Joint Program Office “asked us to help inform them of what the most efficient unwind” would be, he said, and then the JPO worked with the services and foreign customers to set the sequence of deliveries.

“There are, you can imagine, milestones out there of significance for different customers,” Ulmer said. Some countries are getting their initial jets, such as Poland and Belgium, while “Australia is pursuing full operational capability, and they needed their full complement of aircraft. … So these are the kinds of priorities that define who got what capability, when.”

He added that he’s heard no complaints from customers about the sequence of deliveries.

All the jets that go out the door—or deliver from the storage area—are loaded with the Tech Refresh 3 hardware, “and they’ll all get the TR-3 software inserted before they deliver,” he said.

The yearlong hold on deliveries was due to the fact that jets were built with TR-3—faster processors, a new display and other improvements—but the TR-3 package had not yet been fully tested, and the government declined to accept the jets with it. The JPO now expects that full TR-3 testing will be finished in 2025.

Ulmer declined to be more specific as to when in 2025 that will happen because “there are still things you could find in discovery” during testing.

As a stopgap—because both U.S. and partner countries needed to receive new airplanes to conduct training and have combat capability—JPO director Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt in July approved deliveries with a “truncated” version of the TR-3 software, so handovers could resume and pilots could train with the new version of the aircraft. The truncated version allows training with many of the systems and weapons that will be in future jets.

Ulmer said he disliked the term “truncated” and prefers “full combat-capable training software release.”

Schmidt took his time approving the release, as he was waiting for a version that was more stable in flight and needed fewer reboots per sortie. Several new versions of the software have been issued since July, giving the aircraft what the JPO calls a “more robust training capability.”

In a May report, the GAO estimated it would take a year to deliver the stored F-35s alongside the new ones, for while Lockheed told the government it could deliver 20 per month—one every business day, roughly—the GAO noted that the company had never done better than 13 per month.

“Even at this faster rate, delivering the parked aircraft will take about a year once the TR-3 software has been completed and certified,” the GAO said. The watchdog agency reported, though, that the Defense Contract Management Agency deemed the 20 per month figure “feasible,” though it also said that rate would stress the workforce needed to accomplish the deliveries and lead to “coordination challenges” with the government.

Each aircraft being delivered is “a full-up-round,” Ulmer said, with all the TR-3 enhancements, including the updated Digital Aperture System hardware, which provides 360-degree all-weather and night visibility on the pilot’s helmet visor.

The version being delivered has “90-95 percent of the full capability in it,” he asserted. “It has much of the weapons capability in it. … We just need to get through the flight test and the certification air worthiness associated with those capabilities out of flight test and then into our customers hands.”  

Ulmer predicted that the delivery total for F-35s in calendar 2024 will be 75-110 jets—as planned, and then “next year, I’ll say, 156-plus.” That’s the number predicted by the company three years ago.

“I told you, we didn’t slow the production system down. International demand is very strong,” he said, noting the latest buy of 32 airplanes from Romania.

“And I think you’ll see a lot of international, existing customers, increasing their program of record. So I see us running at 156-plus. Because we have a backlog.”

He cautioned that all of these estimates are subject to “external factors and things you don’t have control over,” like bad weather, which could delay the TR-3 test program. But “we’re not going to cut a corner. I call it ‘build slow to go fast.’ We have to have certified pilots. We have to have chase aircraft. You have to have the weather until you get IFR clearance. So we’ll follow all the rules and go as fast and as safely as we can.”

“I continue to articulate my requirements back to the Air Force headquarters to build out more resilient command and control, battle management capability, more forward in the theater,” Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an interview at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

The Air Force’s first order of two “operationally representative prototype” E-7A aircraft, for $2.56 billion, is slated for delivery in 2028. The contract comes after months of delay as Boeing and the Air Force haggled over pricing. The service plans to buy 24 more by 2032, bringing the fleet to 26, to replace the E-3, which has an increasingly obsolete radar and 1950s-era airframe.

While Schneider did not address a question regarding whether the planned number of E-7s will be enough, he added that he is “encouraged” by the state of negotiations between the service and the aerospace giant.

“I’ve had a number of rides on the E-7 over the years, and it is a fantastic capability,” Schneider told reporters at a media roundtable. “I would, as would other commanders, like to see the E-7 fielded in the United States Air Force sooner rather than later, in number, so that we can continue to deal with the challenges that we face in a growing, more highly contested environment in the western Pacific.”

In the meantime, regional allies are among the key stopgap solutions for the service’s smooth transition to the E-7 in future operations.

“The Australians have the E-7s, the Japanese have capabilities with their E-2s and their version of AWACS, and (there are) others in the region,” said Schneider. “Some of our command and control is based on sensing and forward-based radars, and we’re able to do more and more in terms of air domain awareness, information-sharing agreements, to tap into to others’ equipment and sensing capability to help build out this picture.”

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force fields 13 E-2C Hawkeyes and four E-767s for its airborne early warning and control missions. The Royal Australian Air Force operates six E-7s. The Air Force began working alongside Australian crews on the platform in 2022 through a Military Personnel Exchange program.

Last month, two of the three B-2 bombers deployed to RAAF Amberley Base teamed up with a Wedgetail for operations in southeastern Australia, working alongside other Australian assets like the F-35A and EA-18G Growler. In July, U.S. Airmen assisted in operating E-7 during Exercise Pitch Black to coordinate training with F-22 Raptors.

“I see a layered solution to how we develop air domain awareness, and I see ground-based capabilities as part of this,” added Schneider. “I’m optimistic about a multilayered, resilient approach to sense and sense-making when it comes to that.”

Continuing resolutions have become the norm each year as Congress repeatedly fails to approve appropriations bills on time. CRs keep spending levels frozen at the previous year’s marks and prevents new programs from being started.

A continuing resolution would hamper promised pay increases for troops, hinder nuclear modernization, and pause purchases of weapons and aircraft the Air Force sees as key in a future war with China, among other impacts outlined in a fact sheet the Department of the Air Force provided to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“Any length of CR impacts readiness, hinders acceleration of the Space Force, delays military construction projects, reduces aircraft availability, and curbs modernization in the race for technological superiority,” the department argued. “These impacts get dramatically more perilous as sequestration is imposed under the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.”

Fresh details on a stopgap bill’s possible impact on the Air Force and Space Force came hours before the House failed to pass a six-month CR proposed by Republicans that would keep the federal government running on the fumes of fiscal 2024 funding until March 28, 2025. 

Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to approve a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown starting Oct. 1.

The Pentagon routinely opposes stopgap spending legislation, arguing the measures erode military readiness by jeopardizing acquisition and training and injecting uncertainty into the defense industry. 

The Air Force seeks a budget of $188.1 billion in fiscal 2025; the Space Force requested $29.4 billion.

Under a three-month CR, the Department of the Air Force said, space launch and testing modernization would fall short and technologies that protect space-based communications could not enter production. Such a bill would also hit routine maintenance of aircraft and other equipment, the Air Force’s flight training budget, facilities upkeep, and upcoming contract awards.

A six-month CR could stop the Air Force from buying greater numbers of high-end munitions like the extended-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, and Stand-In Attack Weapon. That could trigger a $400 million fine for failing to meet contract obligations, the Air Force said, and hurt Air Force and Navy stockpiles.

Such a bill would delay production of the first seven T-7A Red Hawk training jets by a year and keep flat the number of MH-139 Grey Wolf patrol helicopters in production at Boeing, the service said. Fighter programs are also at risk; a CR may restrict future F-35 Lightning II contracts and delay further production of the new F-15EX Eagle II, “potentially leading to [a] production line break and [delaying] support for fielded active and ANG aircraft,” the Air Force said.

After six months, the Air Force may also struggle to cover increases in military pay or dole out bonuses designed to keep Airmen in critical and undermanned career fields. A CR could delay Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve training and affect funding for “must-pay” housing and subsistence stipends, the service said.

And while less likely, a yearlong CR may postpone progress toward the department’s strategic goals, stall the Space Force’s advancement, and prevent dozens of major construction projects from getting underway.

Work on Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the Air Force’s top priority effort to field a fleet of drone wingmen, would also see delays under a yearlong CR, the service said.

If a CR is still in place on April 30, 2025, federal discretionary spending would automatically be slashed to meet caps imposed by the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“These actions not only stifle modernization, but inalterably give ground to our adversaries by reducing [Department of the Air Force] buying power by $15 [billion],” the department said.

CRs also prevent the services from launching new programs, slowing research and development, and pausing projects to restore or replace neglected buildings on base. 

The Department of the Air Force flagged 33 new construction projects totaling $2.1 billion, from aircraft simulator facilities to a child care center, that would be put on hold under a CR. At least $1.3 billion more in research, procurement and maintenance initiatives—not including classified programs—would also face delays.

Military officials are asking for an exception to the restriction on new starts for at least five efforts. Those include a Space Force program to develop secure tactical communications satellites, “bunker-buster” bombs designed to penetrate targets deep underground, and nuclear weapons security.

Service leaders fear potential budgetary woes could hit programs of all sizes and across all missions. 

Speaking to reporters at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference here Sept. 16, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said a sweeping new training exercise, slated for next summer to practice for a prospective war with China, could be pared back without adequate funding in place. Space Force Brig. Gen. Kristin L. Panzenhagen, the top officer overseeing launch facilities at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, said the service may have trouble awarding the next National Security Space Launch contract—which hires commercial firms to take military satellites and payloads to orbit—if they don’t get a new budget.

Air Force Undersecretary Melissa G. Dalton predicted that a CR could delay bringing on the service’s secretive new B-21 Raider stealth bomber as well as postpone development of a new land-based nuclear missile and efforts to maintain the current arsenal.

“The stakes are pretty high,” Dalton said Sept. 18. “We need resources aligned and on time.”

As a last-ditch effort to support top priorities that would be neglected by a CR, service leaders can ask lawmakers to repurpose existing funds away from other programs. It’s unclear whether the Department of the Air Force will lean on that option in the absence of stable funding.

“We’re going to be doing as much as we can to continue our momentum on moving things forward,” Allvin said. “If that requires reprogramming, then we’ll … pursue those as necessary. But I really can’t give you a very precise answer on that now, until we see … how long that continuing resolution would be.”

News Editor Greg Hadley and Pentagon Editor Chris Gordon contributed to this story.