AI’s Coming Revolution Hits Home First at Holloman AFB

Alamogordo, NM – November 30, 2025

The future of work isn’t arriving in Silicon Valley first—it’s landing on the flight line at Holloman Air Force Base, where F-16s scream overhead and MQ-9 Reaper drones are already flown by crews staring at screens instead of cockpits.

Holloman, the economic heartbeat of Alamogordo and Otero County, employs more than 5,000 military and civilian personnel and pumps $420 million a year into the local economy. But the same artificial intelligence that is quietly replacing pilots with algorithms is now accelerating toward every corner of the base—and the nation.

Last year the Air Force canceled a $23 million drone-instructor contract that supported 70 local jobs, citing “advancements in autonomous systems.” This year, the 49th Wing began testing AI co-pilots in F-16 training sorties. By 2030, the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative plans to field thousands of low-cost, AI-driven drones—many of them launched, maintained, and “piloted” from trailers right here on Holloman.

Elon Musk, whose Starlink terminals already blanket the base and whose Optimus robots are being evaluated by the Army next door at White Sands, put it bluntly in a recent West Point interview: “Future wars will be won by whoever has the best drones and the best AI. Humans on the front line will be too vulnerable.” For the pilots, sensor operators, and maintainers who have long formed the backbone of Alamogordo’s middle class, that statement is no longer theoretical.

The National Picture: From Battlefield to Boardroom

What’s happening at Holloman is a microcosm of a larger upheaval. In 2025 alone, AI has eliminated 78,000 jobs worldwide, with white-collar roles—data analysts, junior coders, customer-service agents—disappearing fastest. The World Economic Forum now projects a net gain of jobs by 2035, but only after 92 million positions are displaced globally and 170 million new ones created in fields that barely exist today.

Musk, speaking last week at the U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum and again on Joe Rogan’s podcast, predicts the transformation will be even more sweeping: within 10–20 years, AI and robotics will make paid human labor economically unnecessary. “There will be no jobs,” he said. “You can have a job if you want, like a hobby, but robots will provide everything we need.” He calls it “universal high income”—not just basic income—where abundance ends material poverty and leaves humanity searching for purpose.

Mainstream forecasts are more measured but still dramatic:

• Drug discovery timelines shrink from a decade to under three years

• Personalized AI tutors close education gaps

• Autonomous logistics and humanoid robots become standard in warehouses, hospitals, and homes

General AI capable of outperforming humans at almost any cognitive task has a realistic shot at arriving by the mid-2030s, according to the latest surveys of researchers

Back Home in Alamogordo: Risk and Opportunity

For Otero County, the stakes are uniquely high. If Holloman’s traditional pilot and maintenance jobs shrink while new AI-specialist and drone-swarm operator roles grow elsewhere, the region could face a painful transition. Local leaders and New Mexico State University-Alamogordo should consider more certificate programs in unmanned systems and AI fundamentals, but demand can quickly outpace supply without proactive local educational leadership and an appointed citizen and military led educational task force to immediately address the local need. 

On the flip side, the base’s deep bench of cleared personnel, secure facilities, and existing drone expertise make it a natural hub if funded and prioritized by Congress for the very jobs AI is creating: simulation engineers, ethical-AI ethics officers, autonomous-systems testers, and cyber-defense specialists. The Air Force’s new “Collaborative Combat Aircraft” program—AI wingmen that fly alongside human pilots—will be tested at White Sands and Holloman potentially first, creating an opportunity to bring hundreds of high-paying tech jobs, further increasing the need to the local school leadership to respond, now, today!

City and county officials and education leaders must work with Rep. Gabe Vasquez and Sen. Ben Ray Luján, and push for a “Holloman AI Transition Fund” to retrain displaced contractors and attract private AI-defense startups to the Tularosa Basin. This push for federal funding and support of mission at Holloman and White Sands Missile Range should be a collaborative priority beginning at the city and county commissions, championing AI military operations training and basing locally via resolutions and partnership discussions with Federal leaders in congress and the pentagon. 

The choice is stark: Alamogordo can become a Rust Belt story in the desert, or it can ride the wave and turn a military town into one of America’s unexpected AI powerhouses.

Ten years from now, the sound over the Sacramento Mountains might not be the roar of afterburners but the quiet hum of server farms and drone rotors.

Whether that future brings prosperity or hollowed-out neighborhoods in Alamogordo, depends on decisions being made right now—on base, in city and county commission chambers, via the local board of education proactive and now, in Santa Fe, and in Washington.

Either way, the AI revolution isn’t coming to Alamogordo. - It’s already here! 

Sources

1. Holloman AFB Economic Impact Statement, U.S. Air Force, FY2024

2. Pentagon Replicator Initiative Overview, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 2025

3. Final Round AI Layoff Tracker, November 2025

4. World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025

5. Elon Musk, U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum, Riyadh, Nov 2025

6. Joe Rogan Experience #2223 with Elon Musk, Nov 2025

7. PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer 2025

8. New Mexico Economic Development Department, Military Base Impact Study 2025 update

9. Office of U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, “Protecting and Growing Jobs at Holloman,” 2024–2025 press releases

10. Air Force Materiel Command, Collaborative Combat Aircraft Program Brief, Oct 2025

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