The Air Force’s mantra under Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has been to “accelerate change or lose,” but the most recent wargaming indicates, so far, the latter, according to Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force’s futurist. The corrective action is to speed up ...
The fastest ways to hobble a major acquisition program are to put it through the funding instability of continuing resolutions or to apply constant major changes to the requirements once the program is well underway, panelists said on an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies ...
Fighter jet engines are an inherent compromise. If you want more power, you pay by giving up range. Want more range? It's going to cost you in power. Each generation of jet engines has dealt with this unbreakable rule. But maybe there really is another ...
President Joe Biden can help smooth tensions with Turkey and prevent the NATO ally from further defense purchases from Russia if he throws his support behind the acquisition of 40 F-16s and about 80 modernization kits at an expected meeting on the sidelines of the ...
The Air Force’s “4+1” fighter plan for the 2020s, unveiled in recent months, will leave the service with a fleet that’s too small and improperly configured to deal with peer threats. What’s needed is a plan that emphasizes stealth aircraft; rapidly retires non-stealthy and expensive-to-maintain ...
The Next-Generation Air Dominance Fighter is Air Combat Command’s top priority, because without it, the Air Force can’t provide the control of the air the whole military depends on to operate, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly said. He also named a replacement ...
The Heritage Foundation ranked both the Air Force and the Space Force as “weak” in its 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength released Oct. 20, citing issues ranging from low readiness and misaligned investment in fourth-generation platforms to insufficient space domain awareness and offensive space ...
The Senate Appropriations Committee released its version of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act on Oct. 18, proposing an additional half billion dollars for the Space Force's 2022 budget and 16 more C-130Js for the Air Force, while leaving the service's requests for F-35s and ...
Lockheed Martin plans to enter the Advanced Tactical Trainer fray to supply the Air Force with a new jet to bridge undergraduate flight instruction and fighter training units, but the company declined to say whether it will offer a T-50A derivative, a different non-developmental airplane, ...
Air Force F-15s and F-16s are now cleared to refuel from new KC-46A tankers using the air-to-air refueling boom, the head of Air Mobility Command, Gen. Mike Minihan, directed Oct. 15. The order is the third "interim capability release" since July clearing aircraft to refuel ...
Chinese officials at the Zhuhai air show forecast an increase in production and shortened development time for stealth fighters, without giving specifics. To match the U.S. Air Force's fifth-generation fighter inventories—not even including the Department of the Navy's—China would have to build 125 such jets ...
American deterrence efforts came one step closer to a critical new level when the Air Force proved a stealth fighter is capable of delivering a tactical nuclear weapon inside hostile territory, Air Combat Command confirmed Oct. 4. The F-35A is the first fifth-generation fighter to ...