The F
-22 Raptor Team has been selected as the recipient of the National Aeronautic Association’s 2006 Collier Trophy, the most prestigious award in aviation. Although the F-22 has long been in development and its capabilities well known, its performance in last summer’s Northern Edge exercise in Alaska, where it led Blue forces to a 241-0 kill ratio, made 2006 the year in which the Raptor’s promises came true. The trophy resides in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington; annual winners get a smaller duplicate.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
