“Electric air taxis” are coming to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., early next year, as the Air Force and Joby Aviation announced a deal April 25 as part of the service’s Agility Prime program. The deal’s announcement comes just a few days after Air Force pilots ...
Though touted as “loyal wingmen,” Collaborative Combat Aircraft may not always be paired with crewed aircraft and may function only in concert with one another or weapons in “swarms,” the better to complicate an enemy’s ability to track and counter them, senior Air Force CCA ...
The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board—a group of experts and researchers the department taps for independent advice on key science and technology efforts—is undertaking four studies in 2023, including two that will likely inform the service’s approach to Secretary Frank Kendall’s operational imperatives.
DARPA and the Air Force conducted the final test of their scramjet-powered Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile, DARPA announced Jan. 30, and said the program’s “findings will now be used in follow-on efforts.” The Air Force is moving forward with two hypersonic weapons—the AGM-183 Air-Launched ...
The Air Force has handed out a $334 million contract to contractor Leidos for “Mayhem,” the secretive program aimed at developing a larger class of hypersonic system, the Pentagon announced Dec. 16. The contract comes more than two years after the Air Force first began asking ...
A new lab building at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., will house some of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s “irreplaceable” equipment for testing how electronic spacecraft parts will likely stand up against radiation in space. Also this year at Kirtland, AFRL opened the Skywave Technology ...
The Air Force is considering making aerodynamic retrofits to one of its flagship cargo planes in an effort to save on fuel and be kinder to the environment. As part of a project that has been in the works for years, the Air Force Research ...
The Air Force will make a “significant investment” in uncrewed, collaborative combat aircraft in the fiscal 2024 budget, a quartet of generals announced at the Pentagon. They insisted that the technology is mature enough to move aggressively toward a program that will yield operational capability ...
A cubesat sent to blaze a trail for NASA’s next space station arrived in lunar orbit Nov. 13—the first cubesat known to ever have done so—after a voyage that proved tense at times. Meanwhile the small company that created the tiny spacecraft secured a new ...
Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, moderated a discussion on "The Future of Propulsion" with Michael Gregg, director of the Aerospace Systems Directorate; Shawn Phillips, chief of the Rocket Propulsion Division; John Sneden, director of the Propulsion Directorate; and ...
The Air Force plans to complete testing of a full-scale blended wing body cargo/tanker aircraft within four years, according to the department’s new Climate Action Plan. The demonstrator could be a prototype for a future operational mobility aircraft or family of aircraft, and the plan ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Test Center will host their first-ever summit on autonomy, a weeklong session this fall to dive into the concept that is key to the service's future strategy. The Defense Department is accelerating its push for autonomous ...