Mission capable rates across most Air Force fleets declined in fiscal 2023, continuing a broad downward trend, according to information provided by the service. Readiness fell predictably in high-demand, hard-used assets and some systems approaching retirement, but the availability of some vintage aircraft continues to ...
Rapid Acquisition & Sustainment
The Air Force should quickly and comprehensively adopt digital methods to regain the speed of fielding new gear necessary to match the "blistering" pace of China's modernization, a new Mitchell Institute paper recommends.
Questioned by lawmakers on the state of the Air Force's maintenance depots, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. "Jim" Slife said April 30 that the service is investing in IT and data infrastructure to better sustain new software-intensive platforms—while acknowledging that there is still ...
Lockheed Martin projects more than a billion dollars of losses on a classified program, but company officials said April 23 they are confident it will turn profitable by 2028 and become a "franchise" system in the U.S. military.
Brig. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey, or whoever succeeds him as the Department of the Air Force’s top acquisition official for command, control, and communications/battle management, is poised to take command of the new Air Force Information Dominance Systems Center. The service will also establish a program ...
William LaPlante said there’s been “significant improvement” in the program over the last decade, and program leaders can now “focus on the future of the F-35, instead of the past.”
The Air Force may have just flown the last test of the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, its only hypersonic missile that may be ready for production. The Air Force zeroed the program in fiscal 2025, but won't say if the project is over.
Spending caps set under the Fiscal Responsibility Act shaved around two percent from the topline of the Air Force’s planned fiscal 2025 budget, and that reduction will have an outsized impact given constraints on what accounts can bear the cuts, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew ...
The Pentagon’s system of planning and budgeting needs a substantial overhaul, a blue-ribbon commission found, offering 28 recommendations that can help the Department of Defense deal with the quickening pace of technological change and increases in the threat, commissioners said.