The Air National Guard’s 102nd Fighter Wing at Otis AB, Mass., has sent its first few airmen to intelligence school in Texas, reports the Cape Cod Times. The transition from an F-15 fighter unit to one that operates a distributed ground station—providing a real-time image analysis capability—will take place over about a year and a half. The state’s Adjutant General had confirmed the intel mission last year, saying the Air Guard would rename the wing sometime in 2008. The Times also notes that the new mission will not support all the wing’s airmen, so Otis is still in search of another new mission.
General Atomics, the maker of one of the Air Force’s first Collaborative Combat Aircraft, has ambitious plans for its family of semi-autonomous drones beyond the FQ-42, including a flying-wing aircraft capable of carrying out both reconnaissance and strike missions. Meanwhile, the Air Force Research Laboratory announced a new program to…