The Air Force has long faced a silent crisis: It can’t train and retain enough pilots. And now, challenged to confront peer adversaries, rather than the insurgents it’s been engaging for the last 20 years, even the pilots the service can train aren’t getting the ...
A crew chief and production superintendent from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., took home the 3D-printed trophy in the Department of the Air Force’s Spark Tank innovation contest for a simple idea he predicts could “solve a lot of issues across the aircraft community.” Master ...
The Air Force’s Rapid Sustainment Office is again reaching out to industry for new approaches to three-dimensional scanning so it can replicate aircraft parts that are no longer in production. On Jan. 4, the RSO published a call for a “cutting-edge, automated 3D scanning system” ...
The Air Force’s science advisers say the service needs to make its approach to cutting-edge “Vanguard” programs more concrete and repeatable—and to ditch them when things don’t work out. USAF leaders asked the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to grade how the Vanguard concept is ...
The Air Force will flight test the U.S. military’s first hypersonic missile this month, Air Force acquisition boss Will Roper said Dec. 14 at the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum. Speaking on the theme of “From Acquisition to Lethality,” Roper also described progress on the ...
The Air Force's technology incubator, which doles out more than 1,000 small research contracts worth up to $50,000 each year, unveiled an advance look at its 2021 programs during its virtual Accelerate event, Dec. 7-11—the first organized by the newly relaunched AFWERX 2.0. AFWERX 2.0 ...
AFWERX’s contribution to the national Covid-19 pandemic response seems destined to enter the annals of heroic procurement tales. But, it almost didn’t happen.
USAF is interested in information about “commercially available wearable technologies” that can allow it to monitor service members’ “biometric data”—such as changes in heart rate and oxygen levels—to help it detect COVID-19 early, according to a Nov. 10 request for information published by Air Force ...
A team of five female Airmen last week evaluated a flight suit designed to be more comfortable and functional for women pilots battling gravitational forces in the cockpit. High-speed pilots wear G-suits to avoid health issues when they rapidly accelerate in flight, but since 2001, ...
The Air Force is calling on small businesses to pitch new technologies the service can help nurture into “war-winning” capabilities, service acquisition chief Will Roper said Oct. 26. These “Skyshots”—something short of “Moon Shots”—would be comparable to USAF's flying car initiative: requiring sustained investment that ...
The Air Force's new senior leadership team, in its first trip together, visited the service’s effort to create a “flying car” for both military and civilian use. Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Chief Master Sergeant ...
The innovation group AFWERX is hunting for new technologies that could revitalize Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., nearly two years after it was crushed by the Category 5 Hurricane Michael. AFWERX’s annual Fusion technology showcase, held online July 28-30, brought 370 exhibitors together to pitch ...