March 2019

Vol. 102, No. 3

Today’s Common Access Card won’t disappear anytime soon—but the search for a better way to prove your

Letters

BLASTING OFFAfter reading your first editorial and letter in the December 2018 edition of Air Force Magazine [“The Air—and Space—Force We Need,” p. 2, and “From the Editor in Chief,” p. 3], I am wondering if you have had a...

Verbatim

THE WEAPONIZATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA “We need to move beyond our 20th century approach to messaging and start looking at influence as an integral aspect of modern irregular warfare.” Andrew Knaggs, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for special...

World

An illustration of what the Russian Novator 9M729 cruise missile might look like after it ejects its booster and begins flight to its target. The US claims it violates the ban on producing, testing, or deploying any land-based or ballistic...

Airman For Life

Civil Air Patrol cadet Emma Herrington became the first graduate of the new Cadet Wings Program, earning her private pilot’s certificate after passing the Federal Aviation Administration’s practical test. Photo: courtesy of Emma Herrington CAP ANSWERS PILOT SHORTAGE CALL Emma...

Faces of the Force

Capt. Zoe Kotnik became the F-16 Viper Demonstration Team’s first female commander and pilot on Jan. 29 and also the service’s first female single-ship aerial demonstration pilot. Kotnik, an Air Force Academy grad and eight-year veteran, has more than 1,000...

Aperture

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan addresses a group of reporters off-camera at the Pentagon in January. Photo: Sgt. Amber Smith/USA THE SHANAHAN ERA Feb. 4, 2019 Following the resignation/firing of James Mattis in December, Patrick M. Shanahan may be President...