Top Department of the Air Force leaders told lawmakers May 7 they need to divest aging aircraft to make room for more advanced systems, setting up a now familiar budget fight on Capitol Hill. “America cannot wait to modernize the Air Force any longer, not ...
As the Air Force pieces together its fiscal 2023 budget, due early next year, it must think not only about the immediate future, but also five years down the road. That’s a challenge right now, said Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force’s deputy ...
Draft versions of the 2021 defense policy bill in both the House and Senate will keep enough legacy tankers in the Air Force to “bridge” the fleet to the point where the KC-46 will become fully operational without extensive stress on the military’s refueling backbone, ...
Gen. David L. Goldfein ends his tenure as USAF's 21st Chief of Staff today, handing uniformed leadership of the service to Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. In "The Goldfein Years," appearing in our July/August issue, Editorial Director John A. Tirpak talks to the outgoing chief ...
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, ...
House appropriators want to severely limit funding for the Air Force's new Advanced Battle Management System, while also restricting the series of ABMS exercises. The Air Force's fiscal 2021 budget calls for more than $302 million for ABMS —its “system of systems” linking space, air, ...
House appropriators are planning to offer the Pentagon $694.6 billion for operations, personnel, and procurement, plus another $10.5 billion for military construction, in fiscal 2021. The Defense Department funding proposal is $1.3 billion higher than DOD received in fiscal 2020, but nearly $4 billion lower ...
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 ...
Air Mobility Command is pursuing a contract for privately operated tankers to meet the unrelenting need for booms in the air as the service proposes cutting 29 KC-135s and KC-10s. The command is wrapping up a feasibility study on the plan this month with the ...
The planned purchase of the F-15EX to replace aging fighters is needed to maintain the homeland defense mission as aging F-15Cs continue to see reliability issues, the head of U.S. Northern Command told lawmakers. USAF Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander of NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace ...
Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper said March 11 the Air Force is still working on promising research despite a largely stagnant science and technology budget request for fiscal 2021 that is worrying some lawmakers. As the U.S. looks to develop advanced military systems like ...
The first 747-8 aircraft has begun the modification process to become a VC-25B, or the next Air Force One. The process, which began Feb. 25, will include cutting out parts of the aircraft’s skin and structure in the forward and aft lower lobes to install ...