The Department of the Air Force wants $267 billion for fiscal year 2027, a request that, if approved, would represent the largest single-year budget the service has ever received. The proposal, submitted to Congress in May 2026, channels a significant share of that money toward three technology bets: hypersonic strike weapons, fleets of autonomous combat drones, and artificial intelligence systems designed to compress the time between detecting a threat and hitting it.
To put the number in perspective, the Air Force’s FY2026 budget request was roughly $217.5 billion. The new ask marks an increase of nearly 23 percent in a single year, a jump that reflects both inflation-adjusted growth and a deliberate decision to accelerate programs the service says it needs to fight a technologically advanced adversary.
Three senior leaders are scheduled to defend the request before the House Armed Services Committee on May 20, 2026: Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. The committee’s published schedule lists all three witnesses alongside links to their prepared testimony, which will become part of the official hearing record.
Where the money is aimed
The budget’s marquee investments fall into three categories that Air Force leaders have described as inseparable parts of a single operational concept.
Hypersonic weapons. The Air Force has been developing air-launched hypersonic missiles, including the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), built by Raytheon, which is designed to fly at speeds above Mach 5 and strike heavily defended targets before an adversary can react. Earlier programs like the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) were canceled after repeated test failures, but the service has signaled that HACM and follow-on “Increment 2” designs are now its priority. The FY2027 request is expected to fund continued flight testing and early low-rate production, though exact dollar figures for the program have not yet appeared in publicly available budget justification documents.
Autonomous combat drones. The Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, which pairs uncrewed jets with manned fighters like the F-35 and the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, is central to the budget. The Air Force has awarded contracts to Anduril Industries and General Atomics for CCA prototypes and has described a goal of fielding at least 1,000 autonomous wingmen over the next decade. The FY2027 request is expected to fund the transition from prototype flights to initial operational capability, though the gap between flying a handful of test aircraft and producing drones at scale remains one of the biggest open questions in the budget.
AI-enabled targeting and command. Programs that use machine learning to fuse sensor data, identify targets, and recommend strike options have moved from experimental projects into formal programs of record. The Air Force has invested in AI tools through efforts that grew out of Project Maven and the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which feeds data from satellites, radar, and aircraft into a common picture that commanders can act on faster than traditional processes allow. The FY2027 request seeks to expand these tools across operational units, though the service has acknowledged that testing AI systems for reliability and guarding them against adversary spoofing remain active challenges.
Why the surge, and why now
The budget’s size and focus are driven by a threat calculus that Air Force leaders have stated publicly for several years but are now backing with procurement dollars. China’s People’s Liberation Army has fielded its own hypersonic glide vehicles, tested anti-satellite weapons, and built an integrated air defense network across the Western Pacific that would make traditional strike missions far more dangerous for manned aircraft. Russia’s use of drones, electronic warfare, and long-range missiles in Ukraine has reinforced lessons about the speed and lethality of modern combat.
In prepared remarks and prior congressional testimony, Meink and Wilsbach have argued that the United States cannot afford to modernize incrementally. Their case rests on the idea that autonomous systems and AI-driven decision-making offer a way to generate mass and speed without proportionally increasing the number of pilots and airframes at risk. That argument resonates with lawmakers who watched Ukraine’s military use cheap drones to destroy armored vehicles worth orders of magnitude more, but it also raises hard questions about whether the Pentagon’s acquisition system can deliver these technologies on schedule and at the costs projected.
What Congress will probe
The May 20 hearing is the first formal checkpoint between the Air Force’s ambitions and the political reality of competing budget demands. Committee members are expected to press the witnesses on several fronts.
Integration, not just invention. Buying hypersonic missiles and autonomous drones is one thing; weaving them into existing squadrons, training pipelines, and logistics chains is another. Lawmakers will want to know whether the budget funds the test ranges, maintenance infrastructure, and software sustainment needed to keep these systems operational after they leave the factory.
Cybersecurity and trust. Autonomous systems that rely on AI and networked communications are attractive targets for adversary hacking, jamming, and spoofing. Members are likely to ask what the Air Force is spending on defensive cyber measures and how it plans to validate that an AI targeting recommendation is accurate before a weapon is released.
Trade-offs with readiness. Every dollar directed toward next-generation programs is a dollar not spent on maintaining aging F-15s, funding flying hours, or filling personnel shortfalls. The Air Force has struggled with pilot retention and maintenance backlogs for years, and some members of Congress may argue that near-term readiness should take priority over systems that will not reach full operational capability until the early 2030s.
Cross-service overlap. The Army and Navy are running their own hypersonic and autonomous programs. The Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike missile share technology lineage, and the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative to field autonomous systems spans all services. Lawmakers will want assurance that the Air Force’s spending is complementary rather than duplicative.
What the budget documents will reveal
The detailed line-item breakdowns that would show exactly how many dollars flow to each program have not yet been fully posted in searchable form. The Department of Defense’s comptroller budget materials page hosts the master index of all FY2027 budget books, including Air Force and Space Force component documents. The key exhibits to watch are the Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) justification books and the Procurement budget activity summaries, which will show program-element-level funding for HACM, CCA, ABMS, and other named efforts.
Until those documents are fully available and parsed by independent analysts, the $267 billion top line is best understood as a political signal of intent. The hearing on May 20 will begin to fill the gap between the headline number and the programmatic reality, but the full picture will emerge only as the authorization and appropriations process unfolds through the rest of the legislative calendar. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees will mark up their respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act over the summer, and the final spending levels will not be set until an appropriations bill is signed, likely not before the end of calendar year 2026.
An opening bid with real stakes
Budget requests are, by design, opening bids. Congress has the constitutional authority to add, cut, or redirect every dollar the Air Force has asked for. But the scale of this particular bid matters because it signals where the service believes the future of air power lies: not in more of the same, but in machines that fly without pilots, missiles that arrive faster than any defense can react to, and software that helps humans make lethal decisions in seconds rather than hours.
Whether that vision survives contact with the appropriations process will depend on the evidence Meink, Wilsbach, and Saltzman present on May 20, and on whether Congress is persuaded that the threat from China and other adversaries justifies spending at a pace the Air Force has never attempted before. The testimony, once entered into the House clerk’s official record, will be the first primary source against which every subsequent claim about this budget can be measured.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
