The Air Force’s fleet in fiscal 2019 maintained an overall mission capable rate of 70.27 percent, a slight increase from the previous year. Although some key combat aircraft, such as the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor, which hovers just over 50 percent, sustained low capability rates, service ...
The Air Force plans a high/low mix of rocket-boosted and air-breathing hypersonic missiles to give adversaries a troublesome and expensive defense problem, service acquisition executive Will Roper said May 14. While the ARRW missile is on track for operational service at the end of fiscal ...
The Air Force is reshuffling the oversight of its fighters, bombers, and mobility aircraft, separating fighters and bombers and putting tankers and the Open Skies recap program together with other airlift programs. The reorganization is meant to put greater emphasis on bombers and extract the ...
Air Force Global Strike Command will regularly rotate a small number of bombers to the Pacific and Middle East theaters to maintain a regular deterrence presence and to conduct combat operations as needed, but it will no longer operate out of bases such as al-Udeid ...
The Air Force expects that the 17 B-1B bombers it's asked to retire will be the last until the type "shakes hands" with its replacement, the B-21, early in the 2030s, Lt. Gen. David Nahom, USAF's top planner, said April 16. The B-1 will get ...
Either Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, or Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., will be the first base to host the B-21 Raider bomber. The service announced the start of environmental impact analyses in both locations to see which will be first to operate the Raider. ...