The first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with ballast, rather than an advanced radar in its nose, flew an acceptance flight the last week of February, Air & Space Forces Magazine has learned. F-35s will arrive without radars at Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps bases ...
Technology
A recent supersonic test flight conducted at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio could pave the way for affordable, maneuverable hypersonic missiles by leveraging advances in a decades-old technology. The Air Force Research Laboratory and Ursa Major, an aerospace and defense company, achieved supersonic flight ...
Air Force acquisition officials are on the hunt for small, easily portable, one-way attack drones to arm special forces operators, so they can launch first-person-view precision strike missions like Ukraine has used to great effect against Russia.
Bell Textron is now building a new vertical takeoff and landing X-plane, the X-76, that can achieve jet-like speeds, aimed at special operations missions and cutting ties to traditional runway-based aircraft.
Just one year ago, Collaborative Combat Aircraft took center stage as then-Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin designated the two competing jets prototypes as the first unmanned fighters in Air Force history: General Atomics’ YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A. Twelve months later, it’s the autonomy software that’s flying those aircraft garnering the attention. Autonomy software, more than hardware, may prove the most valuable and enduring element of the CCA ...
The Air National Guard will deactivate an air control squadron in Georgia and dozens of similar billets in Iowa, converting the unit and positions to do cyber operations.
The Air Force plans to put Collaborative Combat Aircraft in the hands of Airmen to experiment with the semi-autonomous drones this summer, Gen. Dale R. White said Feb. 25 at AFA’s Warfare Symposium.
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and ...
The Air Force has a new X-plane: The X-68A LongShot from General Atomics is an air-launched drone intended to carry additional air-to-air munitions. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been developing LongShot since 2021, and announced on Feb. 17 that flight testing could begin “as early as the end of 2026.”