Teams of autonomous vehicles collaborating with a crewed airplane, in which each aircraft in the formation performs a unique mission on its own, is far more effective than the so-called “loyal wingman” approach, in which a piloted aircraft pairs with just one similarly-equipped, autonomous multimission ...
JOINT REGION MARIANAS, Guam—Laid out across a vast wooden table made in the woodshop of a Navy ship repair facility in Guam in 1967 was a map of the Pacific Ocean island chains of the Northern Marianas, Palau, and Micronesia. As large as the map was—spread out ...
The Pentagon handed out more than $80 million in contracts for work on the F-35’s engines and weapons integration as well as another $25 million to support the development of a joint simulation environment for the F-22. The largest of the deals handed out went ...
President Joe Biden highlighted the already planned positioning of two F-35 squadrons in the United Kingdom, along with new air defenses in Italy and Germany, when naming the U.S.'s European force posture moves to deter Russian aggression.
The crewed, central airplane in the Next Generation Air Dominance system won’t follow early timetables that called for new versions to be fielded about every five years because it’s simply too complex, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed. And while the program has entered formal ...
The new “Splinter” camouflage on F-35s assigned to aggressor duty at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., shouldn't negate or interfere with their low observability, meaning they can truly play the role of a stealthy sparring partner for USAF fighters, according to a Nellis spokesperson. The ...
The Stand-in Attack Weapon is to be a pathfinder system in two ways, industry and Air Force officials said. The SiAW will both open a corridor through enemy air defenses and potentially create a new way of buying weapons. The Air Force is looking for ...
Raytheon Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney military engines unit received a $4.385 billion Naval Air Systems Command contract for 178 of its F135 engines to power all variants of the F-35 fighter. The eventual contract value could be as much as $8 billion. The contract ...
Pledging to pursue “speed without sacrificing discipline” in the acquisition process, Gen. Duke Z. Richardson took command of Air Force Materiel Command on June 13, relieving Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., who has run the service’s acquisition, research, development, logistics, and test organization since 2019. ...
As the Air Force’s test and evaluation enterprise faces a surge of new weapon systems it needs to test, existing range space must be preserved and ground testing needs to be better resourced, said Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., outgoing head of Air Force Materiel ...
Three of five competitors for the Stand-in Attack Weapon, or SiAW, got small contracts to get the project going, the Air Force said. Lockheed Martin said it is the lead integrator for SiAW, but L3Harris and Northrop Grumman are also participating. The SiAW will succeed ...
Development of the KC-46 Pegasus tanker might have fared better if it had been a cost-plus, rather than a fixed-price program, and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said, "I'll take the hit" for that approach. Though progress has been slower, the KC-46 is now ready ...