• The Air Force hopes its recruits will eventually carry real rifles in boot camp, its top enlisted airman said.
• It recently restarted issuing practice M4 carbines to recruits for their eight-week program.
• The push toward real weapons comes amid rising concern in the US of potential open conflict with China or Russia.

The US Air Force hopes to eventually require its recruits to carry real weapons during basic training, according to its highest-ranking noncommissioned officer.

The comment, from Chief Master Sergeant Dave Flosi, came just after the force announced in August that its recruits would receive practice M4 rifles.

“We really would want to get the real ones, because the threat’s real, the environment is dangerous,” Flosi said on Tuesday at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference, per Defense News.

The Air Force hasn’t said when it aims to start issuing actual rifles, but Flosi told the outlet that a live-weapon requirement is a “desired end state” and that the service “is working on taking the next steps down the road.”

Col. Willie L. Cooper told Air and Space Forces Magazine that the Air Force would first have to assess how it can safely roll out such a program.

“It’ll have to go through that entire process to make sure we understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” he said.

Army and Marine recruits are typically issued real rifles during boot camp but are only given ammo during live-firing exercises.

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

Their rifles are fitted 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 dorms, recruits store the practice weapons in wall lockers.

The point is to help new airmen familiarize themselves with the M4 even in the earliest stages of training, according to the Air Force, which said it restarted the program to prepare for “Great Power Competition” — a term increasingly being used by the US military for potential conflict with Russia or China.

Fears of war with Moscow, Beijing, or both at the same time are sparking a widespread push for increasing military spending and reviewing troop standards.

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

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