Airmen and F-35s deployed to the Middle East from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, increased the jet’s mission-capable rate during combat operations while helping guide the future of the jet’s complex maintenance logistics system. F-35s from Hill’s 4th Fighter Squadron deployed to Al Dhafra Air Base, ...
An undisclosed number of B-2 stealth bombers touched down March 9 at Lajes Field in Portugal for the latest bomber task force deployment to Europe. The Spirit bombers from the 509th Bomb Wing and 131st Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., deployed to ...
U.S. Air Forces in Europe leadership is meeting regularly with NATO Air Chiefs and the F-35 users' group to plan out new range infrastructure and training opportunities as American F-35s prepare to deploy to the continent. The planning, led by USAFE’s Warrior Preparation Center, is ...
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. ...
Air Mobility Command's gray tail airlifters and tankers will participate in a series of Joint All-Domain Command and Control experiments this year. The efforts, part of the series of Advanced Battle Management System experiments and other exercises, aim to show how aircraft such as C-17s ...
Miniature nuclear power units that could either provide emergency electricity for domestic bases or power for units deployed to austere locations are under development, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief Ellen Lord told reporters March 4. “We’re looking at small, modular nuclear reactors,” Lord said at ...
Air Force leaders are urging members of Congress to sit down with them in a classified setting so they can better understand the service’s thinking behind its fiscal 2021 budget request, which once again attempts to retire a host of legacy platforms to free up ...
The Air Force needs 2,100 more pilots to reach its goal of 21,000 aviators, indicating that efforts to stem the pilot shortage have not yet been successful. “Increasing production of new aviators remains the most significant lever we have to arrest aircrew shortages,” service officials ...
The Air Force recently sent an unexpected aircraft over the village of Kismayo, a rural town on the Somali coast that has been a hotbed of extremist activity by groups such as al-Shabab. A nuclear-capable B-52, forward deployed to U.S. Central Command, flew an unmistakable ...
Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told Senate legislators March 3 the service will not use the new KC-46 tanker unless absolutely necessary to fight a powerful adversary. The wide-ranging Senate Armed Services Committee hearing—the first of multiple chances the Air Force has this week ...
In a first for Spark Tank, the Air Force’s Airman-powered innovation competition, two teams were named co-champions. The winning ideas that bested over 200 other submissions—six of which were live-pitched onstage at the Air Force Association’s 2020 Air Warfare Symposium here on Feb. 28—look to ...
While NAS JRB Fort Worth-Carswell, Texas, is slated to become the primary home of Air Force Reserve Command’s future F-35As, AFRC is now reexamining three bases it has deemed “reasonable alternatives”—Whiteman Air Force Base, Mont., Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., and Homestead Air Reserve Base—to ...