Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the Air Force and Space Force must counter rapidly changing, AI-enabled threats and disclosed for the first time that the Space Force has deployed weapons in space.. Speaking at the 2026 Air and Space Cyber Conference on Sept. 14, Meink said the department was operating against adversaries that are adopting new technologies quickly while relying on a budget process “built for a different pace of warfare.”.
“The threat is changing actually faster than I thought possible when I took this job 18 months ago,” Meink said. He described the department’s mission as to “defend the homeland, deter all adversaries, and … if necessary … win in combat.”. Meink cited the European theater as an example of how warfare is shifting.
“One-way attack drones have replaced artillery as the primary killer, while armor often sits idle,” he said.. He said artificial intelligence was increasing adversaries’ ability to scale combat power. “These technologies are revolutionizing the battlefield.
They allow countries that would not have had the resources in the past to quickly adapt and scale their combat capabilities,” Meink said.. Meink said the Space Force had already put on-orbit space control weapons into service. “We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” he said..
He said recent adversary advances and lessons from Iran had prompted a renewed focus on point defense, the department’s term for protecting bases, airfields and operations from airborne threats. He said the effort would include new training intended to close gaps exposed in an era of drones and AI..
Meink repeated the department’s push to combine crewed and uncrewed systems. He said pairing manned aircraft with low-cost autonomous systems would expand combat power at scale and produce a “radically different looking Air Force” by 2032.. By 2032, Meink said special operators would be able to employ thousands of autonomous one-way attack weapons.
He also said the Air Force intended to have at least 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft in service by 2032, with those autonomous fighters taking on many missions now performed by manned aircraft.. Meink said two new autonomous aircraft had been named the FQ-42 Vengeance and FQ-44 Fury.
He also said the department was developing a new uncrewed multi-purpose aircraft called the Mass Modular Aircraft.. With budget support, the department plans to field 100 Mass Modular Aircraft by 2029 at half the cost of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft and one-tenth the cost of a fifth-generation fighter, Meink said.
He said 500 of the platforms were expected to join the Air Force operational fleet by 2032.. In space, Meink said the Space-Based Interceptor program had moved from initial contract to flight-ready hardware in less than a year. He added that launches for the Air Moving Target Indication constellation would begin this month..
Meink said Basic Military Training had been revised to expose airmen to flight lines, ranges and operational settings earlier, and said the Air Force Academy had been reorganized around the profession of arms. He added that the services were using hundreds of AI tools for tasks including sortie scheduling and data fusion..
He said the department had established all 26 Portfolio Acquisition Executives and delegated broad authority to them to speed delivery in defined mission areas. “For most programs, that now includes Milestone Decision Authority,” Meink said.. Meink warned that funding shortfalls could block the effort.
He also said industry needed to bring costs down because many weapons, components and systems “perform extremely well, but the costs are growing faster than the rate of inflation.”. Featured image credit. Tags: Autonomous weaponsU.S.
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