Transcript: JD Vance’s 2026 Commencement Speech – US Air Force Academy

All of you learned how to drop everything and get to infection-ready condition in exactly five minutes and 23 seconds. But beneath all the crazy stories and experiences, something serious and profound happened on this campus over the last four years.

Over that time, this institution has been preparing you to inherit one of the greatest military traditions in the world. That’s not an exaggeration. This Academy has a long and storied history. It inculcates some of the finest and most timeless values of our armed services. Integrity, service, excellence. And you are the latest generation to join the proud, unbroken lineage. That strong blue line, you are its newest members.

But one of the defining characteristics of American air power and now space power has always been its willingness to evolve alongside the nation it protects and the threats that we confront. You pay homage to the great tradition, but you also innovate for the future.

No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy

There’s a phrase in the military and I’ve heard it a lot, which is “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” You’ve probably heard it so many times by now that it barely registers. I heard it a lot when I was in the Marine Corps, but I’ve heard it more in the last 18 months and it’s taken on new meaning.

Because I’ve come to think that particular phrase explains something much larger than battlefield tactics. People like predictability. We like systems and routines and plans because they create the feeling that the future has already been negotiated on our behalf. It’s easy. And so we build strategic frameworks and technical models. We build slide desks and PowerPoint presentations with arrows moving confidently across maps all over the world. And for a little while, at least, it works. The world feels orderly.

But then something crazy happens. It’s called reality. Adversaries surprise you. Your plan falls through overnight. Some asshole cuts you off in the middle of an operation and makes your blood pressure skyrocket, but you can’t panic and you can’t overreact. Not even if it’s 3 in the morning.

Graduating Into a New Era of Warfare

And members of the class of 2026, you are graduating into one of those eras where that reality, that unpredictability of warfare, is becoming impossible to ignore. Now, your nation, your Vice President, and the President of the United States who sends his very best, we ask you to apply that same adaptability, that same innovation that you learned at this Academy, to an entirely new era of warfare. One shaped by autonomous systems, AI, and cyber operations. Technologies evolving far faster than military institutions have historically been accustomed to.

Now, some of you will operate in the air, some in cyber, and some in space. Many of you will hold jobs that would have sounded like science fiction to graduates of this Academy even 20 years ago. But the roles you’re about to take are dead serious and they are not science fiction, they are now reality. Because our adversaries are studying this country every day.

Adversaries Are Watching You

They’re studying our military doctrine, they’re studying our industrial capacity, they’re studying our political divisions, our attention span, and you graduates, they are studying you. One of the defining facts of this particular class is that nobody can tell you the skills that you learned over the last four years will remain theoretical. They will become very practical and very real very soon.

Airmen and Guardians are serving their nation overseas right now. Across Operation Epicurean, Absolute Resolve, Southern Sphere, and Midnight Hammer. They’ve excelled in executing unimaginably challenging missions under real-world combat conditions. And time after time they’ve made us proud. They’ve accomplished things that the rest of the world quite literally thought were impossible.

Trust me, I’ve seen the intelligence reports. Your predecessors have done things that other people thought were impossible and they did them anyway. Those adversaries woke up to realize that what they thought was impossible had been accomplished by our Airmen and Guardians. You had done them anyway.

American Air Power Redefines What Is Possible

Now when the President needs options, it’s our Air Force and our Space Force who provide them, redefining what is possible mission after mission through sheer human daring. It is American air power that allows us to penetrate denied airspace and strike critical targets across enormous distances with speed, efficiency, and precision. And when the President says he will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, it is the men and women you will join in just 60 days who give force to that promise and to that guarantee.

What Your Civilian Leadership Owes You

Now because you will keep your end of the bargain with bravery and skill and dedication, you should expect some things out of your civilian leadership, out of the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of War. This is why we push forward with the F-47 and the Golden Dome and any number of new and advanced technologies. It’s why the President has made improving military quality of life such a central focus. Why he’s insistent on increasing the defense budget to 1.5 trillion dollars and why he’s proud to support pay raises, new barracks, new hospitals and new schools on base. We want you to be supported so that you can focus on the fight and focus on winning.

And you’re entering an Air Force, and this is maybe the thing the President and I are most proud of, is that we’ve seen extraordinary recruitment numbers. The men and women you will lead in the Air Force and the Space Force are passionate, they are ready to go, they are excited to serve and they will look to you for the leadership of the future. The mission that we will ask them to do under your leadership will showcase the strength, the ingenuity and especially the sound moral judgment of our war fighters.

The Daring Rescue Behind Enemy Lines

And I want to tell you that I saw this ingenuity very real when we had this incredible mission where the 494th Fighter Squadron lost a couple of pilots down in Iran. Now we knew they were alive, we didn’t know exactly where they were. The first confirmation that both crew members’ beacons were active actually happened about a day after these pilots, or the second pilot I should say, went down. And there was this period where we were worried that maybe he wasn’t alive and then this moment of joy when we realized that he was. But that moment of joy, that moment of celebration lasted very shortly because we knew we had somebody behind enemy lines that we had to go rescue.

Now your Air Force, your future force, went in there and did the impossible, sent airplanes into places where no one thought they could land, assembled helicopters on site and went and retrieved an American pilot behind enemy lines, one of the most daring and amazing things that I’ve ever seen. But I’ve never told anybody this before, I was sitting in a secure conference room on the phone with our military leadership and our civilian leadership and that operation hit a bit of a snag.

Lessons From the Field: When Plan A Fails

And I think a lot of us were looking around and saying, are we worried here that this is not going to be as successful as we thought it might? But it was an Air Force general who said, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, we’ve hit some snags, but I promise you we’re still going to get everyone out alive. And that was our great Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine. So smooth, so confident.

And that’s exactly what we did and what we learned is that sometimes Plan A doesn’t always work out. Sometimes Plan B doesn’t always work out. But the reason why the Air Force and the Space Force are so powerful is because they go from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C and they execute time and time again and that’s what makes you the best Air Force and the best Space Force anywhere in the world.

The Legacy of This Academy

But that’s the legacy of this academy. Since this institution’s first commissioning in 1959, generations of airmen and guardians have carried that tradition through times of war. Some return home as legends, pilots and crews whose daring would inspire books and films and direct the eyes of countless young Americans to the skies. Others, like the exemplar of your class, gave everything, sacrificing their lives for a nation that would forever grieve their loss.

All these patriots helped write the story of American air power across the most consequential conflicts of the last 60, 70 years. From the skies over occupied Europe, to MiG Alley in Korea, to the long years of combat over Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, generations of airmen have served their country with extraordinary skill and professionalism. And now, of course, it is our guardians leading that same mission into space and into cyber.

Class of 2026: The Tradition Is Now Yours

Class of 2026, this tradition will very soon become your very own. Something that gives you credibility, something that people look to you and say, you’ve got to be impressive because you’ve got on that beautiful uniform. But also something that you are entrusted to protect and to build on for the next generation.

In 60 days, you will arrive at your first assignments and realize the distance between training and real world operations is much shorter than you might have expected. You’ll be given tasks that sound impossible, and you’ll be leading senior enlisted folks, some of whom joined the Air Force or joined the Space Force before you were even born. But they will look to you for leadership. And you will also arrive prepared. Through world-class academics and athletics of this institution, yes, but most importantly, through repeated exposure to intense fatigue, uncertainty, and responsibility.

No Point, All Grit

I love this phrase, “no point, all grit.” One thing I noticed while learning about your stories is how often, despite all your successes, things didn’t always go exactly as you planned. Broken elevators during move-in, painting the trips red only to spend the next week mopping them clean after a snowstorm. Speaking of which, snow, lots of snow in Colorado Springs, snow during recognition, snow during culminating exercises, snow during seemingly every single major event, but you didn’t let it stop you.

None of these stories are described by all of you bitterly. You just laugh about it. You carry on. You have the right attitude. And that’s as good a sign as any that the amazing education you’ve received has taken root.

Thriving in Uncertainty

Most people spend their entire lives trying to eliminate uncertainty. America’s greatest military institutions, such as this one, teach you to thrive in it. You thrive in uncertainty, and that’s what makes you so lethal. One of the reasons this country invests in institutions like this is because trust, versatility, and fortitude are always important, whatever the weapons and whatever the technology. And I think they become especially important the moment reality collides with our best hopes and our best plans for the battlefield.

Cadets, as all of you know, this year our great nation will celebrate 250 years since the founding.

A Civilization Built by Others, Carried Forward by You

Every new generation born in the United States inherits a civilization that was built by somebody else, but must be built upon by the next generation. And with your commissioning, that duty passes to you.

The general superintendent said something to me while you were marching out, and let me just say for your friends and family, did they look good marching out or what? I knew we had the toughest Air Force and Space Force, now I know that we also have the best looking Air Force and Space Force anywhere in the world.

But the general said something to me, he said, “You know, sometimes I read headlines and it’s easy to get sad or depressed about the state of this country, but when I look at you, when I look at the future of America, I feel great hope that we are and will remain the greatest country anywhere in the world.”

But with your commissioning, the duty to make America the very best it can be, that duty passes to you. And now class of 2026, you join that long blue line at a moment when your nation needs your skill, your nation needs your adaptability, your nation needs your discipline, your sense of honor, and your love of your fellow Americans.

A Responsibility Unlike Any Other

Now as a lot of you of course know, we are in graduation season here in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of your fellow Americans, most of them civilian, have celebrated or will still celebrate graduations during this season, but almost none of them will have your responsibility — quite literally, decisions over life and death.

And if you think about it, that responsibility comes from trust. Your nation gives you incredible responsibility because we believe in you, and this brings me to my final and maybe my most important point.

AI, Warfare, and the Human Conscience

You know, this is the only commencement speech that I’m giving this year, and so I’ve watched a few highlights of graduation speeches where this or that corporate leader will discuss artificial intelligence, AI, and be met with literal boos. Now you can’t boo me, I’m the Vice President of the United States.

But your fellow Americans are understandably worried about AI — about how it will affect the labor market, how it will distribute resources, and how it has fundamentally changed how we interact with one another, our social lives. But the thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare.

Now Pope Leo XIV, in a recent document, encouraged us as human beings not to outsource the most important moral decisions to digital technology, and I want to endorse that sentiment and make it more specific to each and every one of you.

AI will inevitably change warfare, and of course, as you’ve learned over the last four years, it already has. But one of the things that makes Americans unique, that makes you as warfighters unique, is that we wage war justly.

But when I say that we, all of us, wage war justly, I mean fundamentally that you must do so. Because you are the ones who execute, you are the ones who lead on the battlefield. You are the ones who ensure that our lethality in war — which is amazing and necessary — it also coexists with our heart and with our conscience.

It is an incredible burden to put on your shoulders, but it is one that we entrust to you with full confidence. And if the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors, decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.

So as AI transforms the battlefield, in some ways positively, in some ways not, I ask that you be jealous and selfish about your role as the decision maker in warfare. This technology can make you better, but never submit to it. You are the masters of warfare, and both your minds but also your hearts are the opposite of artificial.

Cadets, four years later, you are fundamentally different from the young men and women who first stepped into the footprints on I-Day.

Closing Remarks

JD VANCE: You have changed, absolutely, but the world has changed around you, and the mission to defend our United States, no matter what the world may throw at us, remains the same. And so does the deep gratitude that the rest of America feels for you.

To the class of 2026, congratulations. Your country is asking a great deal from you, but it would not be asking it if we didn’t believe that you were capable of carrying that duty every single day.

So let me say, from the President of the United States and from the bottom of my heart, to this class of cadets who will soon become officers, I am proud of you. I’m proud of you. I love you, and I’ll be rooting for you every single step of the way. Congratulations class of 2026.

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