Air Force Special Operations Command plans to stand up a squadron of CV-22 Ospreys at RAF Mildenhall, England, said AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Eric Fiel. “Probably June or July [2013], we’ll be standing up our third CV-22 squadron when the first CV-22s land at Mildenhall,” he said at the four-star forum of AFA’s Air and Space Conference in National Harbor, Md., on Sept. 19. Next summer, AFSOC also plans to replace its legacy MC-130 covert operations aircraft at Mildenhall. Shortly after the Ospreys arrive, “we’ll begin to recap our ageing MC-130 fleet, both our Talon IIs and our Combat Shadows,” by replacing them with the MC-130J Commando II, said Fiel. AFSOC hopes to introduce CV-22s into the Pacific region as well, in 2014, he added. The command originally planned to deploy CV-22s to England this year.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall caught a ride in the front seat of a modified, artificial intelligence-piloted F-16 on May 2, a high-profile show of confidence in the service’s autonomous technologies—and another key step in maturing that technology for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.