Space Almanac 2005

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Department of the Air Force to pause all planning related to its “Re-Optimization for Great Power Competition” effort—a move that leaves a sweeping plan to transform the Air Force and Space Force in limbo. 

The Missile Defense Agency is moving quickly to gather ideas for President Donald Trump’s proposed “Iron Dome for America” and hopes to make progress on some within the next two years. 

A known “blind spot” in F-16 engines meant maintainers couldn’t see one turned vane inside an aircraft at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M.—damage that resulted in engine failure and a crash that destroyed the $21 million fighter in April 2024, according to a new Air Force report. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for “revolutionary” ways to protect from hackers that workhorse of modern computing, the data bus, a standardized component that allows different pieces of IT equipment—including those in aircraft and weapons systems—to communicate.  

The KC-46A Pegasus aerial tanker still isn’t meeting required mission capable rates, mostly due to parts shortages, and other significant problems are still being remedied, the Pentagon’s test director said in a new report.

A U.S. Air Force C-17 carrying detained migrants arrived at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Feb. 6, the second such flight to the U.S. military outpost this week, a defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine, part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

A Japanese navigation satellite launched from one of Japan's southernmost islands earlier this week, carrying into space a U.S. Space Force space domain awareness payload. 

The Air Force will launch a department-wide series of inspections of buildings across the Air Force and Space Force in the wake of an investigation into the death of a 14-year-old boy at Robins Air Force Base Ga., last summer.

The U.S. military’s V-22 Osprey fleet is set to receive a slate of improvements to increase safety as the fallout from a deadly crash of a U.S. Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan in late 2023 continues to reverberate across the fleet. The primary focus of the confirmed…