The House Armed Services Committee's top Democrat endorsed a new Pentagon legislative proposal designed to work around Congressional gridlock to field new technologies faster. Spearheaded by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the DOD is seeking a "rapid response" authority that would allow initial work to ...
Operational Imperatives
Air Force leaders in charge of the nation's B-2 Spirit stealth bomber fleet say they have been working behind the scenes to keep the aircraft ready—even as a “safety pause” on flying approaches six months in length. A quarter-century after its introduction, the B-2 program ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall insists the service needs to modernize rapidly to face the threat of China. But modernization does not just mean fielding new aircraft, Kendall and other service leaders argue—the Air Force also needs to retire its aging airplanes. “The truth is ...
It’s come a few decades later than perhaps it should have, but the U.S. is on the precipice of sweeping and much-needed modernization for its nuclear arsenal, the Air Force's top boss for strategic forces said May 4. The Pentagon is projecting an investment of ...
More than 50 Air Force career fields—from bomber maintenance to cryptologic language analyst to dental hygienist—are eligible for retention bonuses this year, a slight decline from last year. The Air Force’s Selective Retention Bonus program offers extra compensation to enlisted Airmen in career fields with especially ...
China has structured its military to defeat the U.S. “kill chain”—the sequence of steps needed to spot and destroy particular targets—and the Air Force must now ensure its process is agile and resilient, largely by investing in new platforms and networks, an expert from the ...
In the months following the reveal of Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider in December, several publications affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party or its People’s Liberation Army published articles downplaying the aircraft’s viability, saying the U.S. cannot afford enough of the bombers to make a difference ...
Australia says it won’t buy the B-21 bomber, but Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said it may still be “on the table” when the program is more mature. Warden also reiterated that the new bomber will fly this year.
Retiring Air Force Futures director Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, in his last testimony before Congress, said he worries the service isn’t leaving future Airmen a force “that wins,” and without the changes requested in the fiscal 2024 budget, needed transformation could “come off the rails.”