Over the next few years, a trio of European nations will make major decisions on their future fighter aircraft, meaning a potential impact on the long-term American/European fighter market—and whether European manufacturers can rack up wins against the nearly undefeated F-35—looms.
When Maj. Jenna Waites, an Air Force weather officer, was preparing for Army Command and General Staff College in Kansas earlier this year, the nursing mom faced a dilemma: how to feed her infant while she was away for 10 days. Her solution was to ship a 45-pound case of frozen breast milk—enough for 14 days—at a cost of nearly $500. In fact, many military moms have to ship milk when they are on temporary duty because they don’t have enough at home to feed the baby while they are gone. The only way they can ensure it stays frozen is to Express Mail it.
“At the November G20 meeting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Joe Biden met to discuss ongoing tensions and Turkey potentially purchasing the F-16. Washington should be skeptical. The Turkish government has repeatedly ignored alliance commitments and used U.S. weapons sales against both U.S. and NATO interests, such as its provocations in the Mediterranean and aggressions against the Kurds. Selling Turkey advanced fighter aircraft, which it will then use without constraint, defeats the purpose of the G20 meeting,” write Natalie Armbruster, a research associate at Defense Priorities, and Jordan Cohen, a defense and foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
A bipartisan proposal to create a more expansive military and intelligence program to study UFOs is urgently needed to determine whether unexplained sightings by Navy and Air Force pilots pose a threat or are evidence of some “other entity,” the lead sponsor said Nov. 17. “If it is technology possessed by adversaries or any other entity, we need to know,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said in her first interview about the effort. “Burying our heads in the sand is neither a strategy nor an acceptable approach.”
Two of the Air Force‘s premier software innovation groups signed an agreement to collaborate on technical and workforce issues and better use their limited resources to create a common tech-development stack. The agreement between the Air Force’s Kessel Run and Platform One lays out cultural and technical points the groups will work together on, including building common security authentication standards, enforcing policy, and establishing cross-platform and cross-environment portability. The hope is to eventually enable sharing of code and tools that are often redundant.
Cloud computing is helping the Air Force reinvent everything from combat systems to working from home. Find out the latest on Air Force IT modernization here.
The Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate announced Nov. 17 it awarded an $8.4 million contract to Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems for an experiment in very low Earth orbit projected to launch in 2024. AFRL started the project known as the Precise flight experiment as it seeks to better understand the physics of the upper atmosphere.
It seems like the drumbeat of news regarding the existence of the U.S. Air Force's secret 'RQ-180' high-altitude, long-endurance, flying-wing stealth drone is really picking up in tempo. After three sightings of such a craft, two over America's premier flight test airspace in California and Nevada and another seemingly over the Philippines, it seems like an official disclosure of the aircraft could potentially happen soon. Further evidence of this possibility comes directly from the Air Force's Profession of Arms Center of Excellence.
U.S. national security space organizations released a report Nov. 18 proposing ways to boost the nation’s space economy and technology base. The 92-page “State of the Space Industrial Base 2021” report was written by senior officials from the U.S. Space Force, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Defense Innovation Unit. It summarizes discussions held with more than 250 government, industry, and academic experts.
New guidelines for responsible artificial intelligence provide a step-by-step framework for AI companies, Defense Department stakeholders, and program managers to help ensure that "AI programs are built with the principles of fairness, accountability, and transparency at each step in the development cycle of an AI system," said Jared Dunnmon, technical director of the artificial intelligence/machine learning portfolio at DIU.
The Air Force will not move forward as sponsor of the No. 20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevy shared by its team owner and Conor Daly, who brought the military branch to ECR after stops at Dale Coyne Racing and Andretti Autosport with Air Force funding. “They are entirely out of IndyCar,” Daly told Racer. “We actually got this decision a little while ago.”