An independent academic team will assess how ready the F-35 is for full-rate production, and its findings will be integrated into a new program timeline, the Joint Program Office reported. The move follows a full-rate production delay by Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief Ellen M. ...
The last of five F-16s damaged in a severe 2018 storm while deployed to Kuwait returned to service on Jan. 6 after years of work at the boneyard. Twelve F-16 Block 50CMs and 333 personnel from the 148th Fighter Wing of the Minnesota Air National ...
Two B-52s flew a direct, 36-hour round-trip flight from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to the Persian Gulf this week in the latest of a series of task force missions to the region. The B-52Hs from the 5th Bomb Wing took off from Minot on ...
The U.S. Air Force Advanced Maintenance and Munitions Operations School is changing the way it molds maintenance and logistics experts in response to the service’s embrace of agile combat employment and to help USAF maintain its competitive edge amid great power competition, 57th Wing Commander ...
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 F-35 will miss yet another deadline for completing final tests and being approved for full-scale production, according to a memo from Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief Ellen Lord. The sticking point is integration of the F-35 with a wargaming simulation system. This has gone ...
Air Force MQ-9s have a new permanent home in Romania. U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced Jan. 4 that Reapers and about 90 Airmen are now based at Romanian Air Force Base 71 at Campia Turzii. The surveillance and attack drones are assigned to the ...
The Air Force Weapons School has recognized Capt. Woodruff “Thunder” Johnson, an F-15E Weapons Officer assigned to the 494th Fighter Squadron at RAF Lakenheath, U.K., with its 2020 Robbie Risner Award. The annual award—whose namesake, Brig. Gen. James Robinson “Robbie” Risner, was the first living ...
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 ...
As America's first approved coronavirus vaccine is shipped across the country and frontline workers are getting their first jabs this week, National Guardsmen have been activated to assist with transportation. Military airlifters are standing by to support commercial shipping networks as well. Governors in 26 ...
Exhausted by almost 20 years of nonstop combat against violent extremism, the Air Force is seeking a new cycle of modernization and refurbishment, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly said Dec. 11. The new construct would routinely change out old gear and modernize ...
The 115th Fighter Wing identified Capt. Durwood “Hawk” Jones, 37, as the F-16 pilot killed when his jet crashed in Michigan on Dec. 8. Jones, from Albuquerque, N.M., was flying a routine training mission when the F-16 crashed in the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan’s ...