How to Put It All Together So It Makes Sense—Quickly: The Air Force plans to test a system to corral all the data from myriad sensor sources in near-real-time and turn it into useable data for warfighters—now not a week from now. Much of the voluminous amounts of data collected by various sensors is not reviewed immediately but stored—often until no longer relevant. The Global Net Centric Surveillance and Targeting system—called Gun Coast—might change that. USAF plans to test it during June’s Northern Edge exercise in Alaska. Maj. Gen. Gregory Power, Air Staff director of operations and support integration, says the system would “digest and disseminate very quickly and very accurately” data fused from various platforms and capabilities to reveal, for instance, the target coordinates of a surface-to-air missile site.
Less than a day after arriving in the Middle East, F-15E Strike Eagles from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. defended Israel from an Iranian attack in April 2024. DUDE flight, four F-15Es from the 335th Fighter Squadron, downed two dozen Iranian drones in roughly 45 minutes.