A General Atomics official said the company is surprised by the Air Force’s plan to stop buying new MQ-9 Reapers in fiscal 2020, after expecting to gradually wind down the production line. Chris Pehrson, General Atomics' vice president of strategic development, told Air Force Magazine ...
The Pentagon is asking Congress to move $3.8 billion, including nearly $1.5 billion in Air Force funding, from weapons programs to the border wall project. The Feb. 13 reprogramming request would shift $2.2 billion from already appropriated base budget funds for fiscal 2020 plus another ...
A touted $30 billion realignment of the Air Force's budget, with some wholesale retirements of major systems, did not materialize in the spending documents released Feb. 10. Instead, the Air Force is reducing its operational fleet to pay for technology upgrades emphasizing connectivity, agile logistics, ...
Only one-fifth of US Southern Command's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance requirement is being met, and much of that doesn't even come from military hardware. SOUTHCOM boss Adm. Craig Faller told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 30 that of the roughly 20 percent of ...
The Air Force’s MQ-9 presence in Eastern Europe has moved south again, as the 52nd Expeditionary Operations Group Det. 2 begins flying in Romania this month. The MQ-9s are deployed to Miroslawiec AB, Poland, and this is the second time they have moved to the ...
An MQ-9 Reaper’s engine design led the drone to crash about 20 minutes after takeoff while deployed overseas in September 2018, a recently released Air Force accident investigation concluded. “Engineering analysis of the data logs, engine components, and propeller governor, as well as reports from ...
The Pentagon will send thousands more US soldiers to the Middle East as tensions skyrocket with Iran following the Jab. 3 targeted killing in Iraq of Tehran’s most prominent military leader. In the aftermath of the strike, the Iraqi parliament has vowed to kick the ...
Congress approved relatively modest funding for the Air Force’s main drone programs in fiscal 2020 while continuing to endorse investments in new kinds of unmanned aircraft.
US European Command and NATO are bringing in new remotely piloted aircraft, and repositioning aircraft already deployed to the region, to ensure it has the best “indications and warnings” of potential Russian activity. But, as always, more capability is needed, the head of US European ...