Boeing announced Thursday that it will pursue technologies that enable multiple small, remotely piloted aircraft to coordinate their activities with each other and with a manned airborne control station. The Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, has awarded the company a three-year, $10 million contract for this work under an initiative called “Foxhunt.” The goal is to allow these RPA to carry out intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance missions more safely and effectively. “The focus of the Foxhunt program is the airborne control of a varied mix of unmanned aerial vehicles,” explained Boeing’s Patrick Stokes. He said this is actually part of AFRL’s “grander vision” of having airborne “motherships” launch, command, and then recover these small RPA.
The top Air Force commander on on the Japanese island of Okinawa has clamped down alcohol and issued a curfew for junior enlisted Airmen and Guardians at Kadena Air Base for the next month. The order came roughly two weeks after a U.S. Marine was arrested for allegedly robbing and…