F-15C Eagles conduct aerial operations in support of Bomber Task Force Europe 20-2 over the North Sea on March 17. Master Sgt. Matthew Plew
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Almanac: Equipment
June 1, 2020
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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
Total aircraft inventory; aircraft inventory trends; ICBM and satellite inventory; aircraft age; tail codes.
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
The United States Air Force is flying less than historic norms and funding for acquisition and readiness is on a path to further hollow out this too small and old force to that is incapable of sustaining an enduring combat air campaign.
For an investment of less than $24 million, the Air Force was able to return a damaged B-2 bomber to flying status in November. The service offered an unusually detailed description of the methods used to fix the stealth aircraft.
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.
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