Almanac: Weapons and Platforms

The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.

This week’s revelation that the Air Force had designated its first uncrewed fighters set the stage for the makers of the two aircraft to talk about the logistics of deploying them to dispersed locations.

Air Mobility Command is nearly done submitting its analysis of alternatives for the Next-Generation Air-Refueling System (NGAS), Gen. John D. Lamontagne said March 5 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

NATO is evolving its defense strategy and military posture, drawing on lessons learned from Ukraine's conflict. NATO and Ukraine launched the Joint Analysis Training and Education Centre (JATEC) in Poland to leverage real-time lessons from the ongoing conflict to inform defense planning.

The Space Force is establishing its first Guardian recruiters as the service seeks to take greater ownership of its force from day one, with aim of setting up a full squadron of around 30 Guardian recruiters later this year.

The Space Force is modernizing its approach to ground control software, taking a more modular, agile, and iterative approach in a drive to overcome the bugs, holdups and delays that have plagued complex ground control systems in the past, leaders said at the AFA Warfare Symposium. 

Retired Air Force Col. John “JV” Venable, a former F-16 pilot and a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, visited with Air & Space Forces Magazine at the AFA Warfare Symposium to talk about the state of readiness across the Air Force, from spare parts to flying…

The first B-21 bomber is making good progress through its flight testing campaign and has required minimal software tweaks, building on extensive shakeouts of its systems carried out on a flying test bed, the president of Northrop Grumman’s aeronautics division said at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 5.

Air & Space Forces Magazine sat down with Charles Galbreath, retired Space Force colonel and a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, at the AFA Warfare Symposium to talk about Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s message to Guardians and all things space happening at…