The United States has agreed to give Ukraine $800 million in military aid that will go toward manufacturing long-range drones to use against Russian troops, Ukraine’s leader said on Oct. 21, fulfilling a longtime Ukrainian goal of getting Washington to buy weapons from manufacturers in Ukraine instead of primarily in America.
South Korea is considering directly supplying weapons to Ukraine as evidence increases that North Korean soldiers are preparing to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine. South Korea’s spy agency (NIS) said last week that North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces personnel to Russia’s far east for training and acclimating at local military bases for future combat alongside Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president is hoping allies will take a more positive stance on his so-called “victory plan” after the U.S. election, but concedes that its key demand—an invitation to join NATO—is not welcome by some major Western partners, in particular Germany.
The Department of the Air Force has tapped Susan Davenport to serve as its chief data and artificial intelligence officer, the organization announced Oct. 22. Davenport will take over responsibilities from Chandra Donelson, who has been the DAF’s acting CDAO since April while also maintaining her role as the Space Force’s data and AI officer. Prior to that, Eileen Vidrine served as the DAF CDAO from January 2023 until her retirement earlier this year in March.
The Air Force said Oct. 22 it has detected trace amounts of organic gaseous chemicals known to cause health problems at all three of America’s intercontinental nuclear missile bases, as cancer fears among current and former Airmen who worked at those installations grow.
The U.S. military needs its troops in fighting shape to carry out the mission, but like many other Americans, service members have become heavier in recent years. More than two-thirds of Active-Duty troops are now considered overweight or obese, Military Times previously reported. ... Anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic can offer troops fast weight loss, and their use has grown across the ranks in recent years, even as some researchers argue that the military brass is not using them as much as they could.
From an F-35 fighter to an antenna connecting with a satellite, the Department of the Air Force ingests huge amounts of data every minute—but making sense of all that information will require new technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to sift through the noise and present the key points to warfighters so they can take action.
A new, in-depth study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) finds no near-term value for military operations in cislunar space with the possible exception of space surveillance — and a considerable amount of “hype” about both technological readiness and the commercial business case.
It will take as much as two years before production woes on the Air Force T-7A Red Hawk trainer aft fuselage stop dragging down profits for Swedish sub-contractor Saab, according to the company’s CEO.
Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet told analysts on Oct. 22 that the U.S. Air Force plans to wait until Increment 2 of the future family of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) to introduce a combat role, relegating aircraft to be purchased in Increment 1 to a strictly experimental role.
Longer-than-expected negotiations over the Pentagon’s next two batches of F-35s kept Lockheed Martin from collecting about $700 million last quarter, company officials said Oct. 22. Lockheed hasn’t been able to strike a deal for the next two production lots—18 and 19—so they’ve had to spend company cash to keep the production line running.
The U.S. Space Force is moving closer to establishing a commercial reserve program aimed at leveraging private sector resources for national security, and continues to fine-tune the details with satellite operators and other space companies.
If it wasn’t the broken engine parts, it was a crocodile-infested lagoon. If it wasn’t the bone-chillingly cold rain, treacherous winds or dense fog, it was the oppressive heat that burned their exposed knees in an open cockpit. And if it wasn’t a forced landing in the ocean, it was running smack-dab into the side of a mountain. To say the least, the eight Army Air Force aviators who departed Seattle on April 6, 1924, did not face an easy assignment.
