2022 USAF & USSF Almanac: Weapons & Platforms

Thousands of Airmen and scores of aircraft have poured into the Indo-Pacific region over the past few weeks for Resolute Force Pacific 2025, the Air Force’s largest-ever contingency-response exercise in the region.

A second B-21 bomber will fly soon, and production increases are a recognition of a changing global environment and the important of long-range strike, according to Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, head of Air Force Global Strike Command.

A massive U.S. military exercise in the Pacific is exploring how adding new communications equipment to cargo and refueling aircraft can help coordinate large troop movements across thousands of miles of open ocean.

The Space Force stood up two new acquisition deltas focused on missile warning and space sensing this month, marking the next step in the service's push to link the teams that buy satellites with the ones that operate them, the head of Space Systems Command said July 23.

Freshly installed as the direct reporting program manager for the Golden Dome missile defense project, Gen. Michael A. Guetlein said July 22 that his first line of effort will be to create a command-and-control network—and argued that the space-based interceptors envisioned for the project are technically difficult but not infeasible. 

Russian warplanes conducted a flight off the coast of Alaska on July 22, prompting an intercept from aircraft assigned to North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The traditional space traffic monitoring system for tracking satellites and debris circling the Earth, currently run by the Space Force, is under increasing strain because of the growing numbers of smaller satellites in orbit and growing threats.

Lockheed Martin chief executive officer Jim Taiclet renewed his call for a substantial upgrade of the F-35 with technologies his company developed for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, which it lost out on to Boeing in March. Taiclet said the upgrade would be an important “bridge” to the newly designated…

Congressional lawmakers are pushing for more insight into the disproportionate rate of cancer diagnoses among military aviators as attention to the problem mounts in Washington and beyond.