Capt. Michael J. Kanaan, Air Force Artificial Intelligence co-chair, believes the Air Force needs more computer language experts in order to maintain dominance. Kanaan said the languages of artificial intelligence algorithms can, and should, be taught to Airmen as a mission-critical skill, just like Mandarin, Spanish or Arabic. “The languages of computers themselves are as […]

It started out as a boring day. Sitting in a makeshift hospital situated in an austere and hostile environment at an undisclosed location, Maj. Alexander Le and his fellow Special Operations Surgical Team, or SOST, members welcomed the monotony. After all, a busy day for the members of the surgical team would mean the worst […]

In December 2018, Airman magazine interviewed Maj. Gen. Mark E. Smith, the Civil Air Patrol’s 24th national commander. He leads CAP’s more than 60,000 members across the United States in fulfilling the U.S. Air Force auxiliary’s Congressionally chartered missions of emergency services, cadet programs and aerospace education, in addition to the organization’s steadily increasing role […]

See more Veterinarian photos on Flickr (Editor’s note: The following is an encore presentation of an Airman magazine story documenting an Operation Pacific Angel mission to build international partnerships. In 2012, an Air Force veterinarian, Lt. Col. Douglas D. Riley, partnered with Mongolian veterinarians to improve the health of the livestock which provides the country […]

Lieutenant General L. Scott Rice is the Director, Air National Guard (ANG), the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. He is responsible for formulating, developing and coordinating all policies, plans and programs affecting more than 107,600 Air Guard members and civilians in more than 90 wings and 175 geographically separated units across 213 locations throughout the 50 States, […]

A pilot scans the screen on his helmet-mounted display, monitoring air speed and information about his ground target. Then in a quick turn and ascent, he pushes the plane through the flickering gloom of a stratus layer up to a brightly lit flight path above the clouds. For intermittent moments, his helmet-mounted display screen washes […]

All of the enduring missions of the Air Force begin with the shaping, training and education of young officers and enlisted Airmen. Airman magazine interviewed the commander of Air Education and Training Command, Lt. Gen. Steven L. Kwast at AETC headquarters at Joint Base San Antonio – Randolph, Texas, to discuss the evolution of training […]

Seventy years ago, with Adolf Hitler’s crumbled Third Reich still fresh in their memories and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union having a choke hold on their future, Berlin’s children were starving. With the Nazi surrender in 1945, the Allies divided the defeated Germany. The French, British and Americans took the western half of the nation spreading […]

As the line between illicit trafficking and terrorism becomes more obscure, the U.S. Air Force supports a joint task force comprised of Department of Defense, federal agencies and partner nation representatives to combat one of the biggest threats to national and regional security. The Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF) South, located in Key West, […]

In the Air Force, squadrons are the basic level of operations, its “beating heart” as Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Goldfein calls them. To better understand how significant the squadron is to the Air Force, it’s also important to know what a squadron is. Within the Air Force, the squadron is […]