A leading defense think tank has called on international policymakers to consider supplying the Ukrainian Air Force with Saab JAS 39 Gripen C/D fighter jets. Authors from the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute said in a report that after looking at the Russian air war and requirements for Ukrainian air defense, the Swedish aircraft was “by far the most suitable candidate” of Western-manufactured combat jets that could meet operational needs.
China has at least 200 stealthy J-20 fighters and more than 240 J-16 multirole strike aircraft in service, based on an analysis of construction numbers painted on the jets by a Chinese military aviation expert. Andreas Rupprecht, who has authored several books on China’s military aviation industry and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, told Defense News that based on the construction numbers seen on the jets at the Zhuhai Airshow, there have been four production batches of the J-20 and 11 batches of J-16s.
Replacing Canada’s sole aging space tracking satellite is the top modernization priority for the military’s new space operations organization, according to its commander, Brig. Gen. Mike Adamson. Improving space domain awareness is “from where I sit, the most important” of the 3 Canadian Space Division’s three major efforts to improve Canada’s space capabilities, he said.
The Pentagon’s lead IT agency wants to do more buying and less making, a key leader says. “We want to communicate with our industry partners as much as possible because we will rely on them to deliver capability that the warfighter needs today, and we don't want to necessarily have to develop it,” said Don Means, who leads the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Operations and Infrastructure Center. “We really want to adopt and evolve existing capabilities as much as possible."
A recent study found that the rate of suicide among veterans who had experienced a mild traumatic brain injury, also known as concussion, was three times higher than the general population across the study period, from 2002 to 2018. And those with moderate to severe brain injuries were five times more likely to die by suicide.
A robotic arm developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has completed key tests and is on track to be integrated with a Northrop Grumman spacecraft next year and launch to geosynchronous Earth orbit in 2024, the agency said. “The program anticipates on-orbit satellite servicing activities will begin in 2025,” DARPA said in a news release.
One of the U.S. military’s hardest-working airplanes is the Air Force’s C-17 Globemaster III transport jet, the four-engined workhorse that can do anything from haul a tank to drop bombs. But one of the C-17’s most important missions does not involve taking troops and supplies to the fight. Instead, it involves taking injured service members and civilians away from the fight as quickly and safely as possible. That task falls to aeromedical evacuation crew members, the experts who can turn an Air Force aircraft such as the C-17 or the C-130 into a flying hospital to get the most critically sick or wounded patients safely to higher care.
Col. Josh Koslov, commander of the Air Force’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, and his team are laser-focused on dominating and winning in the electromagnetic spectrum. While anything but new, this invisible battlespace has taken on a whole new level of importance as the United States pivots to confronting peer-state threats. Having stood up only a little over a year and a half ago, and with Koslov having taken on the wing commander role even more recently than that, not much is known about the 350th and its critical and fascinating mission.
The Department of the Air Force is planning to compete a follow-on contract for its Cloud One program and wants feedback from companies to help inform its future. The service recently issued a request for information for the contract, which it’s calling Cloud One Next (C1N), to help chart a course for how to manage and modernize Cloud One in its next iteration, all “while taking recent government leadership direction into consideration.”
Former F-105 Thunderchief pilots held a reunion at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., this month. After approximately 15 years of get-togethers, this reunion was arranged to have as many combat pilots of the F-105, nicknamed “Thud,” as possible come together one last time. “Most of the guys are in their 80’s, so that’s the reason why this is the last one,” said retired Air Force Col. Thomas ‘Waldo’ King, a former F-105 combat pilot and reunion coordinator.