The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the commercial airline industry means Air Force pilot retention—a big problem earlier in the year—is in relatively good shape, but the service still needs to prepare for empty cockpits when the economy comes back. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. ...
U.S. forces in South Korea have not conducted theater-level exercises on the Korean Peninsula for about two years now, and pilots must leave the country for live-fire training, but the head of U.S. Forces Korea said Sept. 10 his readiness remains high despite the challenges. ...
The Air Force is trying an experiment that would take its rotary-wing pilots out of the standard Undergraduate Pilot Training program and send them through an all-helicopter course. The goal is to trim months from training, improve pilot quality and free up fixed-wing slots in ...
Air Combat Command on July 21 awarded three companies contracts worth up to $433.6 million to provide 5,418 annual sorties of adversary air support at five bases over the next four and a half years, a command spokesperson told Air Force Magazine. The contracts with ...
The Air Force is implementing a fighter pilot training plan that will regroup training phases and use new technologies to cut between a third and half off the time needed to transform a raw student pilot into a fighter flight lead, according to the new ...
The Air Force removed the minimum height requirement for applicants who want to fly as it looks to increase the diversity of those entering USAF cockpits. Under previous standards, pilots must reach a standing height of 64 inches to 77 inches—5 feet, 4 inches to ...
The Air Force no longer requires student pilots to conduct formation landings in T-38s, following a crash at Vance Air Force Base, Okla., that killed a student and instructor. The night before the Nov. 21, 2019, crash, the instructor and two supervisors in the training ...
A T-38C instructor pilot failed to take control during a dangerous situation as the student pilot made an incorrect input during a formation landing in November 2019 at Vance Air Force Base, Okla., causing the Talon to flip and skid to a stop, killing both, ...
An F-16 pilot mistakenly dropped an inert bomb on private property near Misawa Air Base, Japan, in November because of a failure of communication, according to a recently released Pacific Air Forces investigation into the incident. On Nov. 6, 2019, an F-16 with the 14th ...
The COVID-19 pandemic won’t halt most Air Force training yet, Air Education and Training Command said in a March 17 release. But it may look a little different, as officials attempt to mitigate coronavirus exposure. Although the Defense Department’s “response to the coronavirus outbreak continues ...
The Air Force is integrating lessons learned from its Pilot Training Next initiative “into the regular pilot-training syllabus” to create an experimental curriculum that will start this summer, 19th AF Commander Maj. Gen. Craig Wills told Air Force Magazine. The ultimate vision for the effort ...
An instructor pilot’s lack of spatial awareness and a failure to follow a stall recovery checklist caused the May 1 crash of a T-6 Texan II during a training flight at Sheppard AFB, Texas, the Air Force states in a recently released investigation. The pilots ...