The US Air Force is accelerating its cyber defenses as frontier artificial intelligence models gain the ability to automate increasingly sophisticated stages of cyberattacks.
Lieutenant General Thomas Hensley, commander of the 16th Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), said advanced AI models can perform reconnaissance and develop exploits in minutes or seconds, tasks that once took experts months or even years.
Air Force Hardens Cyber Defense
Hensley said frontier AI is capable of executing an autonomous “F2T2EA” cycle against digital networks: find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess.
Agentic AI models can also use complex reasoning to build exploit chains, making advanced hacking capabilities more accessible to non-state actors.
The 16th Air Force is responding by continuously monitoring military networks, protecting critical systems, and detecting, disrupting, and mitigating malicious activity.
Its defensive architecture includes zero-trust security, multifactor authentication, and microsegmentation to restrict unauthorized access and contain intrusions.
The air force views the development as part of a broader shift in warfare, with cyber space likely to be among the first domains contested in a conflict.
“We must field defenses that move just as fast,” Hensley stressed.
