Air Force intelligence officials will keep improving the RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone until Congress directs them to ditch it, the 16th Air Force commander said Aug. 13. The RQ-4 enterprise is in limbo, as the Air Force wants to retire 24 of the aircraft ...
Air
The Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office and its partners want more than 60 teams to channel the speed and precision of the world’s top athletes as they chase a new standard in airworthy, 3D-printed plane parts. The “Advanced Manufacturing Olympics,” which are already underway and ...
Bomb builders at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, this week are testing weapons for F-35As, B-1s, and MQ-9s as part of an in-depth combat evaluation exercise looking at the effectiveness of the bombs from separate aircraft. The 86th Fighter Weapons Squadron, the military’s sole group ...
Draft versions of the 2021 defense policy bill in both the House and Senate will keep enough legacy tankers in the Air Force to “bridge” the fleet to the point where the KC-46 will become fully operational without extensive stress on the military’s refueling backbone, ...
An Air Force UH-1N Huey took small arms fire and conducted an emergency landing during a training flight west of Washington, D.C., on Aug. 10. The Huey, part of the 1st Helicopter Squadron at Joint Base Andrews, Md., was flying an instrument approach to the ...
The Air Force’s stealth bombers have returned to the Indo-Pacific. Three B-2s arrived Aug. 12 at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., for the first Spirit bomber task force since a January 2019 deployment to Hawaii. The deployment marks the ...
The Air Force’s two simultaneous Red Flag training events are set to wrap up this week, with the F-35 participating for the first time in the Alaska version. Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., and Red Flag-Alaska at Eielson Air Force Base are ...
The Air Force's new combat search and rescue helicopter completed its first aerial refueling on Aug. 5. Air Force and Sikorsky pilots flew the HH-60W Jolly Green II at 110 knots to connect with an HC-130J tanker during the initial test, which lasted just under ...
The Russian military claims three MiG-31s scrambled to intercept an RQ-4B operating in neutral waters over the Sea of Chukotsk, part of the Arctic Ocean bound in the east by Point Barrow, Alaska, on Aug. 11. The remotely piloted aircraft remained in international territory and ...