“There’s nothing we’re doing today in the fight against ISIL that doesn’t rely on space,” said Gen. Jay Raymond, the new commander of Air Force Space Command, on Friday. The US military’s joint fight within “the complex strategic environment that we face” depends on the capabilities delivered by space assets at every step of the way, he said at a Mitchell Institute event in Washington, D.C. Space operations enable the selection and identification of targets in the battlefield, the coordination of intelligence with RPAs, communication among various elements of the command, and the direction of GPS-enabled precision weapons. Raymond said his mission at Space Command is driven by asking, “how can we get the information provided by space into the hands of the warfighter?”
Bell Textron has won DARPA's contest for a no-runway, high-speed drone that will prove out technologies useful for special operations forces and possibly the Air Force's Agile Combat Employment concept. Bell's design converts a tiltrotor to a jet-powered aircraft able to fly at up to 450 knots.