The Air Force is pursuing Collaborative Combat Aircraft—uncrewed aircraft that will fly as “wingmen” to crewed fighters—but must ensure they don’t get so overloaded with capability that they become unaffordable, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said. The upcoming fiscal 2024 budget will ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has backed off the idea of an unmanned bomber to pair with the B-21 Raider—but there could still be value in building low-cost, less sophisticated drones to accompany the B-21. That was the key takeaway from a recent three-day workshop ...
As the Air Force moves forward with plans to team manned and unmanned systems in the future, the service might be best served by pursuing platforms that can function on their own as uncrewed aircraft—but are still capable of working as “loyal wingmen” to manned ...
The Air Force’s mantra under Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has been to “accelerate change or lose,” but the most recent wargaming indicates, so far, the latter, according to Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force’s futurist. The corrective action is to speed up ...
The Air Force's new tactical aviation study will determine if a surge in F-35 production is needed in order to buy out the planned 1,763 airplanes before the 2040s. But that decision also will depend on funding, contractor capacity, and the need for complementary aircraft, ...
Low-cost, attritable aircraft will likely reshape the fleet design outlined in “The Air Force We Need” white paper of 2018, panelists said during an Oct. 1 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The technology's rapid advance is causing service force designers to ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory’s robotic pilot has returned to the sky, following a mishap that grounded the system last year. The AFRL Center for Rapid Innovation and DZYNE Technologies Incorporated’s ROBOPilot flew for about 2.2 hours on Sept. 24 at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. ...
U.S. forces in the Middle East are not prepared enough to defend against swarms of small drones, and the Pentagon needs to work harder to get ahead of the enduring threat, the head of U.S. Central Command warned. Small unmanned aerial systems, which can be ...
The Air Force will shortly launch its effort to buy Skyborg drone prototypes, according to the official running the unmanned wingman program. The service will begin soliciting aircraft this month and plans to award contracts to the winning designs by the end of the summer, ...