Air & Space Forces Association

The reaction came fast and hard.

The Air Force Association, the American Legion, and a broad coalition of veterans organizations saw the exhibit as a betrayal.

They said the museum had been captured by revisionist academics who wanted to make America look like the aggressor in a war that America had not started.

They said the exhibit questioned the decision, and by questioning the decision, it questioned the sacrifice of every man who served in the Pacific, every family who had waited at home, every prisoner of war who had survived, because the invasion never came.

Here to talk about all things AFSW.

Jared wanted to talk about AFA today, which I'm still not sure what AFA actually stands for.

Air Force something,

something.

Not only do I not.

Talk to

anybody interesting at AFA.

I don't respond to DMs, but then I also don't do what they want me to do on the podcast.

Space Force leaders have long been advocating for doubling the size of the Space Force, arguing that it's a national security necessity.

When we were at the Air and Space Forces Association's annual conference, Lieutenant General David Miller said that the service will need about 25,000 guardians and 12,000 civilians in the next five years.

And just to compare, right now the service has about 10,000 uniformed guardians and about 5,400 civilian employees.

Are they looking for specific skill sets on the active duty side?

Sure, so the announcement by...

Secretary of the Air Force, Troy Mink, at the Air Force Association's conference this week, and then followed up the next day by the brand new Chief of Space Operations, that we have space control weapons, as it was stated.

Notice they didn't say space weapons, but space control weapons.

And so that is very well crafted language and that's why when people were asking him for more details um he said basically something that affected nope this is as far as we're going to go this is a very crafted language for a purpose but um as someone who's been arguing for uh space systems space weapon systems in particular for 20 plus years and having from a deterrence perspective especially it's at the very least a good step in the right direction from a strategic communications side, because obviously for folks who are aware of deterrence theory and practice, there are three main components of a solid, credible deterrent, and that is the capabilities, number one, the weapon systems, two, the political will to use the weapon systems, and then the third is the declaratory policy or the strategic communications about both the other two.

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Welcome to Check 6, where today I get to debrief Aviation Week's amazing team covering AFA.

Joining me for that are Brian Everstein, Aviation Week's Pentagon editor, Vivian Mashi, our Military Space Editor, and of course, Senior Defense Editor Steve Trimble.

I'm Robert Wall, Aviation Week's Executive Editor for Defense and Space.

That's great.

Thank you.

I mean, one of the interesting things about AFA is obviously, you know, A, what gets said on the stage and then just kind of what you pick up as you end up chatting with people.

So why don't we talk, kind of go over that to that a bit.