LONDON — US Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach has been in the seat for less than a year, but his tenure so far has been nothing short of eventful.
Following his confirmation, the Air Force reversed a series of overhauls championed under the Biden administration. Months later, the Trump administration launched a war against Iran, which restarted last week after a ceasefire with Tehran collapsed. And in April, the White House unveiled a historic Pentagon budget proposal totaling $1.5 trillion.
In an interview with Breaking Defense — where Wilsbach also discussed a milestone for the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program and the Trump administration’s various spending proposals — the general expanded on key issues like base defense and hardening shelters, both top issues highlighted by conflict with Iran where high-value aircraft have been reportedly destroyed on the ground.
The general additionally weighed in on the Air Force’s new training jet, the T-7 Red Hawk built by Boeing, which Breaking Defense recently explored in a three-part series that uncovered a host of unreported issues facing the program. And, he addressed delays for the F-35 program, where upgrade woes have left jets non-combat capable and even delivered without new radars.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
BREAKING DEFENSE: In a recent mark from House authorizers [for the fiscal 2027 NDAA], it seems like there was concern about the survivability of CCA drones on the ground. If they’re raising concerns about drones, what about manned, tactical fighter aircraft or any other manned platform in that environment? Are you concerned about the survivability of not just CCA, but also manned aircraft in this environment?
WILSBACH: Yes. One of the outcomes from [a recent “Corona” meeting] was, we were going to start up a new career field for the Air Force, which is point defense.
As we see what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine — and the use of one-way attack munitions and vehicles and drones, and the security, or lack thereof, of bases — we’ve come to the realization that we have to create a new career field and have experts in the ability to defend your airfield from all of these threats. And all of these threats are ballistic missiles, cruise missiles — some of them might be stealthy cruise missiles — certainly drones. Some of them may only be the size of your hand, or they could be much larger. And then certainly the one-way attack drones, like we’re seeing Iran use.
And you have to be able to defend yourself from all of that, which right now our airmen in the Middle East — and not just airmen, there are soldiers and marines and sailors that are doing the same thing against these threats. They’re doing an admirable job, but we have to be able to continue to force project from our airfield. And if they’re getting attacked by these items, you stand the risk of not being able to force project.
A few years ago at an AFA conference, you had a roundtable talking about base protection. You expressed skepticism of hardening shelters. Is that still your view, or do you think there’s need for more of a mix now?
I think that I don’t want to spend a lot of money on hardening shelters. Unless you’re going to send something 100 feet or more underground, we can blow it up, and so can they. So, the economics of building a shelter that is impervious to a strike doesn’t work.
I think the economics favor defending your airspace, defending your ground space with systems that can defeat the incoming rounds, versus building a shelter. Some people would argue, well, you should do both. Well that’s even more expensive. And the other thing is, the shelter doesn’t go anywhere.
Now that being said, there is value in some light protection against small, unmanned threats. Some of them — just nets that are up that keep a small, few-$100 drone from getting next to a $2 billion aircraft. That actually works, [and is] really cheap.
So we need to have low-cost solutions, or economical solutions that defeat a wide array of incoming rounds […] Maybe getting into directed energy that could perhaps be even better at a much wider range of threats that are coming in, and then certainly short-range guns, short-range rockets and missiles. And then we’re always looking at non-kinetic options of being able to somehow use the electronic spectrum either through a jam, or getting into cyber to get into their control systems to make it miss.
For the T-7 Red Hawk, I know you flew in the aircraft recently. Are you confident in that platform, and do you have any concerns about the concurrency there and what that means for pilots early in training?
I was impressed with the aircraft. When I flew it, it had a flight envelope restriction. It still does. This is not new — every single airplane that we get that’s new has a flight envelope restriction, so it was fairly limited and not representative of what we would need it to be in a training scenario. So I had a speed restriction, both slow slow-end speed and top-end speed was restricted, and then it had an angle-of-attack restriction as well. So you couldn’t pull a bunch of G’s, and you couldn’t get really, really slow.
With that as a caveat, what I did pick up on is an extremely easy aircraft to fly. It’s supposed to replace the T-38. Way easier to fly than a T-38. Way easier.
As we expand the flight envelope, I have great confidence it’s going to be a really good trainer to get our new pilots ready to fly the advanced aircraft that they’re going to end up flying. Right now we use the T-6 and the T-38 [for training]. So if we can — and it’s not a decision made yet — but we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to use the T-7 as the single trainer, which cuts down time to train because you don’t have to learn two different airplanes. It also cuts down the overall cost, so we can get pilots trained quicker and for a less amount of money than if we have multiple airplanes in that path.
I wanted to ask about the impact of Block 4 delays for the F-35. Every aircraft delivered over the last two years hasn’t been combat capable. Now they’re delivering without radars. And the Block Four development timeline keeps shifting. With all these delays, how is the Air Force grappling with those issues?
Basically, not much effect because we have the ability to move tails around to put them in the right spots, or to pick the units that have the right jets to deploy. So that hasn’t affected us too much.
That being said, you know we want Lockheed Martin and the subcontractors to step up and deliver TR-3 and Block 4 as quickly as possible with a stable platform that actually works. Northrop [Grumman] also with the APG-85 and deliver those [radars] on time in accordance with the contract.
So, while it hasn’t really impacted us as far as being able to use the F-35, which by the way — F-35 has been doing phenomenally in Epic Fury. They’ve been hitting their targets. They have a very high aircraft availability rate, and so their maintenance has been doing great.
But what could we have done even better if we had had TR-3 and Block 4? What else could we have done? We’ll never know. But we definitely need Lockheed Martin and the other subs to step up and deliver.
Editor’s note: In response to Wilsbach’s comments, Lockheed Martin sent the following statement: “Development on TR-3 was completed in 2025. We continue to build on this baseline through the Block 4 modernization program, which implements upgrades including additional weapons, electronic warfare capabilities and improved sensor technology to ensure the warfighter can defeat any threat. With over 70 major upgrades for all three F-35 variants, Block 4 is the most significant evolution of F-35 capabilities to date. In partnership with the JPO we will continue fielding Block 4 capabilities to ensure the F-35 maintains its unmatched dominance in the skies.”
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