Skyborg, the Air Force’s effort to develop an artificial intelligence-enabled system to control unmanned aircraft, is ready to “graduate” and contribute to key programs such as the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, a top program executive officer said. But while the so-called “Vanguard” ...
Air
The tiny Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka has an outsize geostrategic importance, and its military seeks deeper ties with Pacific Air Forces for maritime security and disaster relief while not roiling China, a senior Sri Lanka Air Force official told Air Force Magazine. Rocked ...
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. had hardly left the Indo-Pacific theater before China flew a joint bomber and fighter mission with U.S. partner Thailand. In nearby Indonesia, the U.S. concluded exercise Garuda Shield alongside Australia, Japan, and Singapore. At each ...
Two weeks after standing down its fleet of F-35s to check for potentially faulty parts in the fighters’ ejection seats, the Air Force has mostly completed its inspections and the aircraft has been cleared to resume normal operations, Air Combat Command announced.
Lot 15 of the F-35 fighter will include up to 129 aircraft, including 49 F-35As for the Air Force, and cost up to $7.6 billion. The final contract award came less than a month after the F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin announced a ...
With upgrades, F-16s can serve as a numbers-builder in the combat air forces until the 2040s, and it’s not necessary to launch its successor yet, program officials said at an industry conference. “We anticipate hundreds of F-16s in active service for decades to come,” meaning ...
The Air Force’s nascent KC-Z program, aimed at developing a next-generation family of systems for aerial refueling, will look to launch its analysis-of-alternatives study in 2024, years earlier than originally planned. Originally, the analysis of alternatives for the KC-Z was set for “maybe in the ...
The Air Force's network of software development teams has grown prodigiously in recent years, with 17 software factories, three software engineering groups, and two enterprise services spread across the U.S. Now, however, USAF is reconsidering how it wants to organize those teams—having them work more ...
The Air Force will have an estimate of what it would cost to upgrade 33 Block 20 training F-22s to operational configuration by mid-September, and it will likely be “a tremendous number,” Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, told ...