Eight years ago, when Russia invaded Crimea, Ukraine quickly capitulated, its military grossly overmatched, poorly trained, and operating according to an old Soviet paradigm. By contrast, in the current war, Ukraine is fighting hard behind an empowered noncommissioned officer corps, U.S. and Ukrainian Air Force ...
DARPA is going to keep working on its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile, even though the program for which it’s meant to be a technology pathfinder is already in source selection. A HAWC demonstrator flew successfully this month. The next phase of the program ...
Ukraine’s air space has been contested for more than five months, replete with advanced Russian fighter jets and near-universal Russian surface-to-air missile coverage that make penetration by aging Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29s and Su-25s both risky and dangerous. For the duration of that time, Ukrainian ...
The Pentagon has put out a call for blended wing body aircraft concepts that could be applied to future military tanker and cargo aircraft as well as commercial aircraft, according to a solicitation posted by the Defense Innovation Unit. The Pentagon wants “concepts of design ...
The question has darkened the counsels of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in recent months to a degree arguably not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis: If Russian President Vladimir Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon to gain the upper hand in its already historically ...
The defense contractors vying for the Air Force’s “bridge tanker” program updated the status of their aerial refuelers, citing new capabilities aimed at automating the refueling process. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has repeatedly said the likelihood of a competition for the service’s “bridge tanker” ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said lower-cost unmanned platforms are key to closing any capability gaps created by reducing the fleet in the near-term while the service invests in capabilities that will enable it to compete with peer adversary China in the long-term. "By having ...
Memorial Day for so many is an extra day off, a time for pool openings, backyard barbeques, and the unofficial start of summer. For those who served, it is something far more solemn: A time to think about those who gave their all for their ...
With a repeat of a hypersonic missile test coming up in the summer and the potential to speed up production of the B-21 Raider, the Air Force is “committed” to putting hypersonic missiles on its long-range bombers, said Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, the top ...