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.
Breaking weapons up into modular segments for ease of upgrade could also improve defense industrial surge capacity, said the outgoing head of Air Force Materiel Command Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. Modularity could also help address the issue of intellectual property while keeping more companies ...
Three of the Air Force’s four Vanguard programs—high-profile ventures chosen for extra investment and accelerated development—are slated to become programs of record by the end of 2023, the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology, and engineering told Congress. The statement seemingly ...
The Golden Horde Vanguard program yielded good results but will not advance into a program of record just yet, Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. told reporters. “We haven’t finalized” what will be done with the technology, he said. The program ...
The Air Force wants to soon be able to deliver cargo from space, and it is putting real money behind the effort. The Department of the Air Force announced June 4 that the Rocket Cargo effort is the department’s fourth Vanguard program, joining the Skyborg ...
In a multi-faceted test, six bombs that were dropped from two F-16s over White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, set up their own communications network, received new targets in-flight, and struck the targets collaboratively in a synchronized fashion, the Air Force Research Laboratory announced. The ...
Having successfully used “digital twinning” to design and prototype its latest jet trainer aircraft, the Air Force is moving to use the new technology to develop and test weapons, too—building an online Colosseum in which vendors’ systems can virtually fight each other. Col. Garry A. ...
The Air Force’s “Golden Horde” weapon swarming project overcame its earlier technical difficulties in a second flight test last month, the service said March 5. The Feb. 19 event featured four Small Diameter Bombs equipped with systems that let them work as a team, two ...
A group of networked bombs failed to hit the right target in the Air Force’s first flight test of its nascent weapon-swarming technology last month, posing a new obstacle as the service tries to speed the concept to the battlefield. On Dec. 15, the Air ...
The Air Force’s science advisers say the service needs to make its approach to cutting-edge “Vanguard” programs more concrete and repeatable—and to ditch them when things don’t work out. USAF leaders asked the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to grade how the Vanguard concept is ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory wants to make its budding swarm of semi-autonomous weapons smarter. “Golden Horde” aims to connect munitions like Boeing’s Small Diameter Bomb I in a swarm that can work through a list of targets on its own, and that could redirect ...
Air Force researchers in October will test whether a software version of the service’s developmental weapons swarm can make its way through a combat mission and reroute itself as conditions change. The demonstration is part of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Golden Horde initiative, a ...