The House Appropriations Committee expressed a lot of gripes about how the Air Force is handling the rapid development and fielding of hypersonic technology and weapons in its fiscal 2020 budget language.
National Security
The Air Force is taking the biggest hit of all the services as the Pentagon reprograms funds to build a wall along the southern border, with about half of the procurement costs coming from appropriated USAF projects.
Twenty facilities at Offutt AFB, Neb., can’t be saved in the aftermath of a blizzard whose floodwaters covered one-third of the base in March, while another 10 can still be repaired, according to an Air Force spokesman.
As the Pentagon moves ahead in its pursuit of hypersonic weapons, the defense community has mixed opinions on whether the new missiles should be considered as strategic assets.
The Defense Innovation Board on Friday published its extensive look at the flaws in the Pentagon’s software development processes, and recommended steps to move it away from a 1990s-era view that connects its acquisition to that of hardware.
Two hypersonic missile development projects jointly underway between USAF and DARPA are in a “race” to see which will fly first, but DARPA’s director said he expects it will happen by the end of this year, or early next.
The Air Force’s F-35A made its combat debut in Iraq Tuesday, releasing a Joint Direct Attack Munition against an ISIS tunnel network and weapons depot in Wadi Ashai, Iraq, US Air Forces Central Command said.
Defense acquisition reform—a cottage industry in Washington for decades—is a red herring, the Air Force’s acquisition chief said Friday.
Future nuclear command, control, and communications data should pass through a network of military and commercial systems so complex that adversaries can’t figure out how to stop it, the head of US Strategic Command said this week.