Defense Secretary Ash Carter on May 15 ordered a US Special Operations Forces team to conduct an operation in al-Amr in eastern Syria at the direction of President Barack Obama, marking the first known ground operation against ISIS forces in...
Though some analysts have suggested there will be a shake-out of the major airframe primes based on who does—or who doesn’t—win the Long-Range Strike Bomber contract, Air Force acquisition chief William LaPlante suggested Friday there may be enough work to...
The choice of a contractor to build the Long-Range Strike Bomber will be delayed from the initial forecast of “late spring” 2015, but more important is “getting it right,” Air Force acquisition chief William LaPlante said. “It doesn’t matter to...
The six marines killed when their UH-1 helicopter crashed in the mountains of Nepal have been identified and recovered, according to a May 17 Pentagon release. They are: Capt. Dustin Lukasiewicz, a UH-1Y pilot assigned to Marine Light Attack Helicopter...
The Pentagon is hiring Watson—IBM’s super computer that defeated all-time Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a 2011 exhibition match—to help interpret the inscrutable 5000 series of procurement rules, Air Force acquisition chief William LaPlante revealed at an...
The Air Force is assessing whether it can structure the Block 4 upgrade of the F-35A fighter with open architecture, so it can compete the upgrade among several contractors, service acquisition chief William LaPlante said Friday. “It’s not been decided...
Air Education and Training Command officials said they boosted pilot safety instruction by introducing the GYRO Integrated Physiological Trainer II, according to a release. It is the first spatial-disorientation flight trainer that allows student pilots to experience the physical effects...
The Air Force will upgrade “20-plus” F-16s with an active electronically scanned array radar in response to a joint urgent operational need from US Northern Command, service acquisition executive William LaPlante said Friday. He told Air Force Magazine after the...
The Air Force Civil Engineer Center has discovered more than $22 million in potential savings for the Air Force, having completed an 8-year study of utility rates for almost 70 USAF bases in the continental United States. The research comes...
The 4th Component Maintenance Squadron’s sensors centralized repair facility was inactivated during a recent ceremony at Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., according to a May 14 release. The CRF at Seymour Johnson was one of three facilities in the Air Force...