Air Force & Space Forces Almanac 2024

An Air Force veteran and former civilian employee was indicted this week for leaking classified information on USAF aircraft and weapons. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida announced the grand jury indictment of Paul J. Freeman on June 27, after Freeman had been arrested and made his initial…

A U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter and a KC-46 Pegasus tanker were involved in an aerial refueling incident off the coast of the Netherlands on June 27, service officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The defense industrial base—the hundreds of companies that supply the Pentagon with everything from new fighter jets and satellites to magnets and ball bearings—is being actively targeted in cyberspace by China and other adversaries, the head of U.S. Cyber Command warned June 25. 

A new training initiative at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., is helping MQ-9 maintainers expand their specialties, essentially giving one Airman the skills of three to be able to generate sorties with minimal crews.

The F-35A mission capable rate for fiscal 2023 was 51.9 percent, or just over half the time, the Air Force reported. Officials attributed parts availability as the culprit, but the fighter’s MC rate has been declining since it peaked in 2020, and the Air Force will be spending more per…

The Air Force released the first video of a new experimental drone in flight. General Atomics’ XQ-67A is intended to prepare the service for its future fleet of autonomous collaborative combat aircraft, and the company has called the drone a “CCA prototype."

U.S. Space Command is interested in orbits around Earth outside the traditional regions where satellites operate, and commander Gen. Stephen N. Whiting sees refuelable spacecraft as a possible key to getting to them. 

The new head of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency told lawmakers he aims to reverse years of poor management of DCSA’s background check modernization effort, which is already more than five years behind schedule and half a billion dollars over budget.

Airmen from Barksdale Air Force Base's 2nd Bomb Wing carried out an unusual exercise June 10-13 during which they loaded AMG-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, or JASSMs, onto B-52H Stratofortresses to test their ability to conduct long-range conventional airstrike missions.