The Air Force is pursuing Collaborative Combat Aircraft—uncrewed aircraft that will fly as “wingmen” to crewed fighters—but must ensure they don’t get so overloaded with capability that they become unaffordable, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said. The upcoming fiscal 2024 budget will ...
Boeing’s defense business has stabilized following a series of massive quarterly losses that put the company in a precarious position, top executives said on an earnings call Jan. 25. Now, officials said they are focused on moving forward with new technology in the Boeing Defense, Space, ...
With the Air Force poised to pour significant resources into its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, the service shouldn't become fixated on a particular price point for each of the unmanned aircraft to the point of neglecting capability or reliability, two of the generals helping ...
With the unveiling of the B-21 Raider, speculation and interest in the new bomber have reached a fever pitch, with a first flight still to come in mid-2023. But the B-21 won’t just be about the large, flying wing aircraft that rolled out in Palmdale, ...
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 new aircraft will soon be in the skies for testing above Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The Air Force has transferred two XQ-58 Valkyrie drones to the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin, the 96th Test Wing announced—a key development as the service moves ...
Two of the Air Force’s most prominent “Vanguard” technology incubator programs—Skyborg and Golden Horde—are graduating to become part of a program of record in 2023 and will form the nucleus of new combat systems, a senior USAF official said.
Royal Australian Air Force Air Commodore John Haly moderated a discussion on "Enabling Manned/Unmanned Teaming" with John Clark of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, Ben Strasser of General Dynamics Mission Systems, and Mike Atwood of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems at AFA's Air, Space & Cyber Conference. ...
Initial planning has begun for the retirement of the B-1 and B-2 bombers, but the game plan depends largely on progress in fielding the B-21 Raider—and on Congress—the Air Force’s bomber program executive officer said. In an Air Force bomber roadmap from 2018, the service ...
Heather Penney of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies moderated a discussion on "Manned-Unmanned Teaming: Myth and Reality" with Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, Mike Benitez of Shield AI, Robert Winkler of Kratos, and ...
While collaborative combat aircraft are among Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s “operational imperatives,” Air Combat Command was already working on the idea, the Air Force reported. Senior USAF leaders at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference said they were looking for a swift pace of ...
The Air Force should build its capacity and striking power with collaborative combat aircraft but must put the teaming aspect of the new class of weapons first, getting the concepts and software right at the outset to ensure that autonomous airplanes do what’s needed and ...