A suspected Iranian plot to attack prized U.S. B-1 bombers housed at Britain’s RAF Fairford exposed an Achilles’ heel in U.K. defenses: its air bases are far from drone-proof. A dozen B-1 bombers were abruptly flown out of Fairford after U.S. officials said they had intelligence that Iran was plotting to target them with drones and other devices. Fears spiked after five men were arrested in the woods next to Fairford last month on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack.
An updated report from the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, now lists 81 U.S. military aircraft as lost or damaged since the United States launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28. That is nearly double the 42 aircraft the research service counted in May, as Defense News reported at the time.
Short- and long-range drone threats against parked aircraft have now morphed fully from theory to reality, as also demonstrated by losses in the course of the conflict with Iran, and even non-state actors are increasingly brandishing these capabilities. Despite the increasing dangers posed to planes out on open flightlines, the Pentagon continues to drag its feet on building hardened aircraft shelters and other fortified air base infrastructure.
The Supreme Court on Oct. 7 wrestled with a case about whether the Air Force needs to conduct environmental review before its munitions detonations in Guam.
As part of the government’s new plan to quickly secure domestic military assets and infrastructure against cyberattacks, sabotage, power grid failures, and foreign supply chain disruptions, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief on Oct. 6 initiated the process to set up the new FORTRESS America Program Office.
After the joint force and its federal agency partners spent almost a month in the near-vacant desert training to defeat drones coming over the U.S.-Mexico border, military officials have opted to hold their next large-scale counter-drone drill in a very different setting: a bustling city with oodles of people and buildings.
The Pentagon instructed U.S. Central Command several days ago to conclude preparations for resuming major combat operations in Iran, U.S. officials said. The directive didn't include a specific date for launching strikes, and President Trump hasn't made any final decisions. But U.S. and Israeli sources say it could happen before the U.S. midterm elections and possibly the Israeli elections a week earlier.
Light attack aircraft and military vehicles have arrived at the new China-Laos joint training facility announced Sept. 29, according to satellite images reviewed by Reuters. The images, taken by commercial satellite provider Vantor, show what security analysts believe are eight K-8 light attack jets and more than two dozen support vehicles on a runway that is still being built—China's latest expansion of its overseas military presence.
Russia targeted Ukraine overnight with dozens of missiles and drones in a "vile" and deadly attack aimed at both energy infrastructure and residential buildings throughout at least 12 regions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Oct. 7.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln a high-level award during a visit to the aircraft carrier Oct. 7, a day before the ship returns home to San Diego after a record-long deployment in support of the Iran war.
An order to ground hundreds of the Army’s AH-64E Apache attack helicopters is likely to affect every squadron and is expected to be in place for months as the service conducts a global inspection, an official told Military Times Oct. 6.
The counter-UAS fight increasingly requires having enough different ways to detect, track, and defeat drones to match the threat, terrain, mission, and cost of an engagement. That is pushing the Pentagon toward a layered approach that includes lower-cost sensing, kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, directed energy, artificial intelligence, and physical protection.
During his time as the lead propulsion engineer for SR-71 Blackbirds at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Tim Conners looked into how to push the iconic recon plane to fly faster than it had ever flown before. The world record for any crewed jet-powered aircraft is officially Mach 3.3, or 2,193 mph. It was set by a Blackbird in 1976 “on a straight-line course over Edwards Air Force Base in California.”
