The US Air Force wants recruits to one day carry real rifles at Boot Camp

The Air Force has not said when it plans to begin issuing live rifles, but Flosi told reporters that a live weapon requirement is a “desired end state” and that the service is “working to take the next steps down the road. “

Col. Willie L. Cooper told Air and Space Forces Magazine that the Air Force should first evaluate how it can safely launch such a program.

“They’re going to have to go through the whole process to make sure we understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” he said.

Army and Navy recruits are typically issued live rifles during boot camp, but only given ammunition during live-fire drills.

Air Force recruits now receive an inert M4 — a gun that was never designed to fire bullets — during their first week of training. The practice was reinstated this summer after it was previously discontinued in 2012.

Their rifles are equipped with a red flash suppressor, and recruits are expected to carry and care for the item throughout their eight-week basic training. When in their dormitories, recruits store their training weapons in wall cabinets.

The idea is to help new Airmen familiarize themselves with the M4 even in the early stages of training, according to the Air Force, which said it restarted the program to prepare for “Great Power Competition” — a term increasingly used much of the US military. for a possible conflict with Russia or China.

Fears of war with Moscow, Beijing or both at the same time are triggering a broad push to increase military spending and revise troop standards.

Washington and the Pentagon have received increasingly urgent warnings in recent years from think tanks, top generals and politicians who say the US risks falling behind or is already falling behind in dozens of areas, from munitions production to shipbuilding capacity to the development of nuclear weapons. .

The US spent about $916 billion on its military in 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with the US defense budget expected to reach $1 trillion annually in the near future.