The Air Force doesn’t want its new “collaborative combat aircraft” to be exclusively part of the Next Generation Air Dominance system but is looking at other air- and ground-based platforms to direct such uncrewed airplanes, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. ...
Skyborg, the Air Force’s effort to develop an artificial intelligence-enabled system to control unmanned aircraft, is ready to “graduate” and contribute to key programs such as the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, a top program executive officer said. But while the so-called “Vanguard” ...
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has two new squadrons of F-35s at its disposal in Alaska just as “quite a bit of action” has taken place in the combatant command’s area of responsibility and the “advanced threats” there are becoming “more lethal,” said the squadrons’ wing commander, ...
Lt. Gen. David A. Krumm wears many hats as the commander of U.S. Northern Command's Alaskan Command, of 11th Air Force, and of North American Aerospace Defense Command's Alaskan Region. Krumm, who is set to retire, has served as the senior military leader in Alaska since April 2020. ...
The Air Force will likely make a decision this summer on whether to insert Advanced Engine Transition Program powerplants into the F-35 fleet, Secretary Frank Kendall said, because he doesn’t want to waste money on further delay if the program isn’t going forward. “We need ...
More than 10 months beyond the originally expected goal, the F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin have reached a “handshake deal” on Lots 15-17 of the fighter, which collectively will amount to only 375 aircraft. No pricing information was included in the JPO’s announcement, ...
Following meetings with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, Australian defense minister Richard Marles said the two countries and the U.K. are working toward creating a “seamless” mutual defense industrial base to draw on the capabilities of all three countries for future defense systems. ...
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 ...