Contracts for F-35 airframes in Lot 18 and 19 should be signed in the spring, but an engine deal is still not in hand and could take months longer. The delays don't seem to be driven by anticipation of how the new Trump administration will ...
Operational Imperative 4: Tactical Air Dominance
In her final address in the Pentagon’s No. 2 job, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks touted her team's work to quickly disperse U.S. military’s capabilities to better challenge China, while cautioning against miscalculation in the competition between the two great powers.
The second version of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft should have more capability than the first but mustn't be an "exquisite" and expensive platform that would defeat the notion of "affordable mass," outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said.
The appearance of new Chinese combat aircraft in recent weeks—potentially a new bomber and medium bomber, a smaller, fighter-size aircraft, and a new AWACS platform, among others—didn’t influence current Air Force leadership’s recent decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance program or the service’s broader strategic ...
Outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall thinks accelerating the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program will be his biggest legacy, as they will be "transformative" of how the service fights.
The Air Force has a word of caution for those who are urging that autonomous systems supplant crewed platforms: we still need a human in the loop.
The Air Force still hasn’t set the requirements for the second increment of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, service acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said, leaving decisions about the project to the incoming Trump administration.The service has already punted decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter ...
The Air Force is scaling up the Joint Simulation Environment to enable large-scale mission training possible for F-35 and other combat pilots at bases all over the country and even overseas.
The Air Force is deferring decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance stealth fighter program to the incoming Trump Administration, the service announced. It will continue its review of the program in the meantime, as well as continue the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction phase being ...