Ten USAF and Navy aircraft types trained together in a large force event on Nov. 17, which included testing several new technologies and capabilities aimed at degraded communications and contested environments. Large Force Test Event 20.03 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., featured the F-35, ...
Moody Air Force Base, Ga., will no longer train Afghan pilots to fly the A-29. Instead, Afghan instructor pilots in Afghanistan will take over training, with that schoolhouse expected to be fully operational by April. Over the last five years, more than 30 student pilots ...
An A-10 pilot with the Michigan Air National Guard received the Distinguished Flying Cross on Nov. 5 for dramatically guiding his Warthog to a belly landing in 2017 after a catastrophic gun malfunction blew the aircraft’s canopy off and prevented the landing gear from functioning ...
The Air Force revamped its F-16 Basic Course following a 2017 incident where an inexperienced student pilot strafed the wrong target and killed a military contractor. Now, students must fly their first nighttime close air support sortie with an instructor pilot in the rear seat ...
While the Air Force has moved to put the F-15EX fighter program under contract, it's not obliged to buy the entire notional fleet of 144 of the jets, and could terminate the program at any time, according to Air Force Materiel Command. It may wish ...
RAF Mildenhall, U.K., will remain open and keep its American refueling and special operations missions through the 2020s, reversing the Pentagon’s original 2015 plan to consolidate bases and infrastructure across Europe. The Pentagon last week announced broad plans to downsize the troop presence in Germany, ...
Annual budget reviews instituted by former Air Force Secretary Heather A. Wilson should make it easier to settle the hard financial decisions that loom ahead, a top Air Force aide said Aug. 3. Anthony P. Reardon, administrative assistant to Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett, ...
A document justifying the Air Force's purchase of potentially $23 billion worth of F-15EX fighters from Boeing indicates the Air Force could buy even more, replacing not only the aging F-15C/D fleet but also its somewhat younger F-15E ground attack stablemate. The heavily redacted document ...
The Air Force should replace traditional metrics like cost per flying hour and unit price when calculating the cost of weapon systems with metrics that instead account for weapons' efficiency and effectiveness. By focusing instead on cost-per-effect, a new study argues, the Air Force can ...
A year after the House Armed Services Committee passed its fiscal 2020 defense policy bill in an unusually partisan fashion, the panel appears to be taking a step back from major fireworks and aerospace programmatic shifts in its 2021 legislation. The full committee’s version of ...
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s defense spending plan for 2021 would give the Air Force and Space Force largely what they want, with some notable tweaks. “What this bipartisan bill does is straightforward: care for our troops; preserve peace through strength; and defend this great ...
Fighter jets won support among senators in new defense policy legislation that also raised questions about some of the Air Force’s top priorities. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved a $740.5 billion version of the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill 25-2 on June 10. Its ...