The Senate confirmed Dr. Troy E. Meink, a veteran airman and engineer, as the 27th Secretary of the Air Force on 13 May 2025.
With 35 years’ experience in numerous roles, serving as a KC-135 navigator, an instructor, and a lead engineer for ballistic missile test vehicles, Meink was confirmed as the Department of the Air Force’s highest ranking civilian leader by 74 votes to 25.
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As an officer, he completed 100 sorties, including eight combat and 29 support missions in operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Provide Comfort in 1991.
Meink is President Donald Trump’s pick for Air Force Secretary, succeeding Frank Kendall III, who stepped down in January after serving under the former President Joe Biden since 2021.
Procurement overhaul
Meink’s accession comes at a time when the US military is struggling to keep up with emerging technologies as bureaucratic and legacy procurement procedures are said to be more of a barrier to acquiring capabilities than they are to facilitating their entry into service.
A typical acquisition must satisfy nearly 50 documentation requirements and attain 50 external sing-offs, noted US senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in his opening remarks of a session on 28 January.
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By GlobalDataMeink told the Committee, during his nomination session on 27 March, about his time as the National Reconnaissance Office Principal Deputy Director. He stated that in this role he had “significantly accelerated delivery of capability and at a lower cost,” subsequently pledging to “bring that same drive for innovation to the Department.”
He also offered solutions: “streamline the budgeting and acquisition process, tailor or risk management approach, increase the level of competition, broaden our industry base and ensure we are recruiting and retaining the needed talent.”
Lethality over all else
Meink’s objective coincides with a comprehensive agenda directed by his boss, the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which the lethality of the armed forces not only comes before all else, but even comes at the cost of everything else.
Last week, Hegseth announced that people who experience gender dysphoria are no longer permitted to serve in the military. The ban will extend to literature and materials which the government perceives as promoting “divisive concepts and gender ideology” in the Military Educational Institution library collections.
Likewise, Hegseth has also trimmed down the workforce, terminating contracts of around 8% of the probationary workforce at the Pentagon, the Washington headquarters of the Department of Defense (DoD).
F-47, China
Under Meink’s watch, the US Air Force will bring its sixth generation aircraft, the F-47 fighter, into service. Crucially, this crewed aircraft will serve as the centrepiece of a novel hybrid combat formation including autonomous and attritable Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
Notably, the future fighter was announced in March, only a few months after a peer rival, China, unveiled the Chengdu J-36 fighter jet in December 2024.
“Near peer competitors such as China are evolving faster than we are in some cases, which will result eventually in the US losing its technological advantage,” Meink observed during his nomination session, just days after the USAF update on the F-47 for the first time.
This political, military and economic contest with China is not helped by the fact that China’s president, Xi Jinping, tightened control over military equipment research, with new rules implemented at the beginning of March.
Notably, the Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy has helped to propel China’s military. MCF is the act of promoting – or ensuring – the coordination and integration of military and civilian industry, which is all the more important in a technological era of dual-use.
This even includes Chinese entities present in the United States. Last month, the DoD blacklisted 50 Chinese companies – including prominent technology providers, Huawei and Tencent – operating in the US that it suspects may be too close to the People’s Liberation Army.
