Air Combat Command boss Gen. Hawk Carlisle unveiled ACC’s newest command strategy Aug. 10, entitled “Securing the High Ground,” which lays out how ACC will modernize and transform the US Air Force combat forces to better meet 21st Century threats and challenges. The document outlines Carlisle’s priorities for his tenu?re as ACC commander, he said in statement marking the release, and will provide a “roadmap to ensure the Combat Air Force can provide unmatched air dominance for our nation now and into the foreseeable future.” As it prepares the force for future fights, it must invest and continue to refine practices such as live, virtual and constructive training, which joins up live-fly events with computer simulations, and to invest in science and technology research which could generate leap-forward capabilities and concepts, the strategy states. ACC must also focus on linking up its modernized Fifth Generation aircraft with its older fleet of legacy fighters via improved data links and better air-to-air weapons in the mid-term, to meet growing challenges in the air superiority mission, and must work to improve a balanced domain approach to USAF’s global command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance network. (Click here for the full PDF file).
Anduril and General Atomics will develop their Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force, beating out Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. But any of the non-selected companies can compete to actually manufacture the eventual design, the Air Force said.