The X-62A VISTA flies in the skies above Edwards Air Force Base, California, April 30, 2024. Richard Gonzales/USAF
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2024 USAF & USSF Almanac: Installations
June 7, 2024
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Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org
An Air Force F-16 Thunderbird crashed Dec. 3 near Death Valley, Calif., with the pilot ejecting safely. In a statement, the Thunderbirds—officially the U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron—said the incident occurred at approximately 10:45 a.m. local time “during a training mission over controlled airspace in California.”
The U.S. Air Force’s KC-46 Pegasus fleet hit a major milestone Dec. 2 with the delivery of its 99th and 100th aircraft at Travis Air Force Base, Calif.
The National Reconnaissance Office is seeing “great output” from its constellation of proliferated low Earth orbit satellites and is working with the Space Force and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to operationalize the capability, according to Deputy Director Maj. Gen. Chris Povak.
The Space Force is planning improvements at its launch ranges to better accommodate the logistics and infrastructure demands that come with the launch industry’s shift toward reusable rockets, according to the commanders of the service’s two launch deltas.
The Air Force’s airlift fleet is in desperate need of modern connectivity, spare parts, and other innovations to keep going amid growing demand and modernization plans still in their infancy, according to a former senior leader and a new research paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
An F-16 pilot was awarded a Silver Star for a harrowing mission in which he dodged multiple surface-to-air missiles during the opening weeks of the operation against the Houthis in Yemen earlier this year.
The Space Force’s strategy to replace its fleet of neighborhood watch satellites in geosynchronous orbit includes plans to field multiple satellite constellations, one focused on reconnaissance and one focused on surveillance that will autonomously track objects in GEO, the service said in a Nov. 26 notice.
Boeing received a $2.47 billion Air Force contract Nov. 25 for 15 more KC-46s, bringing to 183 the number of Pegasus tankers on contract to all customers, foreign and domestic. The new contract—for Lot 12 of the initially planned KC-46 buy—is to be completed by 2029.
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