The Air Force is leaning toward a less-sophisticated autonomous aircraft in the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the services chief futurist said. He also suggested that the next increment of CCA may be air-launched, a la the "Rapid Dragon" experiments conducted by the ...
Operational Imperative 4: Tactical Air Dominance
ADVERTISEMENTOperational Imperative 4: Tactical Air Dominance
President Donald Trump has decided to proceed with the Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter jet after reviewing the program and its project costs—and Boeing will build it.
More than one-eighth of the U.S. Air Force’s entire fleet of F-22 Raptors lined the runway at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., on Jan. 31, as the 1st Fighter Wing flexed its ability to rapidly put airpower into action.
GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney received matching $3.5 billion contracts to prototype their versions of the Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion engine this week, and the CEO of Pratt’s parent company, RTX, said things are looking up for the military engine business, even if the platform ...
Contracts for F-35 airframes in Lot 18 and 19 should be signed in the spring, but an engine deal is still not in hand and could take months longer. The delays don't seem to be driven by anticipation of how the new Trump administration will ...
In her final address in the Pentagon’s No. 2 job, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks touted her team's work to quickly disperse U.S. military’s capabilities to better challenge China, while cautioning against miscalculation in the competition between the two great powers.
The second version of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft should have more capability than the first but mustn't be an "exquisite" and expensive platform that would defeat the notion of "affordable mass," outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said.
The appearance of new Chinese combat aircraft in recent weeks—potentially a new bomber and medium bomber, a smaller, fighter-size aircraft, and a new AWACS platform, among others—didn’t influence current Air Force leadership’s recent decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance program or the service’s broader strategic ...
Outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall thinks accelerating the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program will be his biggest legacy, as they will be "transformative" of how the service fights.
