Two Chinese fighter jets intercepted an Air Force WC-135 Constant Phoenix in an unsafe manner, including flying inverted above the USAF plane on Wednesday. The WC-135 was flying a “routine” mission in international airspace over the East China Sea at...
Air Force Space Command boss Gen. Jay Raymond on Friday downplayed Blue Origin’s recent problem in the testing of its BE-4 rocket engine. On May 14, the company announced via Twitter that it had “lost a set of powerpack test...
A team of “very senior retired military officers” recently completed an assessment of the entire Air Force Global Strike Command community to determine whether the wide-spread changes implemented over the last few years are working, AFGSC vice commander Maj. Gen....
US space command and control (C2) operations will soon begin to incorporate commercial data into space situational awareness (SSA) for the first time. “This summer sometime we’re going to bring on a capability called a non-traditional data pre-processor,” Lt. Gen....
The Federal Aviation Administration is likely to request fiscal year 2018 funds from Congress to support taking on aspects of the space situational awareness (SSA) debris tracking mission, Lt. Gen. David Buck told Congress Friday. “My understanding is that there’s...
Last month, the Air Force held its first Space Flag exercise, modeled after Red Flag, the service’s premier air combat exercise held several times a year at Nellis AFB, Nev. Lt. Gen. David Buck, commander of US Strategic Command’s JFCC...
A GAO report released May 17 levels sustained criticism at Department of Defense space acquisition efforts. “Many major DOD space programs have experienced significant cost and schedule increases,” the report finds. Costs for the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite...
The Air Force’s QF-16s are putting F-35s to the test at Edwards AFB, Calif., by jamming the fifth generation jet’s radar in preparation for initial operation test and evaluation, which starts next year. Three QF-16s, which can be flown unmanned...
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) released the text of a bill aimed at reforming the military acquisition system on May 18. The bill would allow the Department of Defense to save money and time by purchasing commercial-off-the-shelf items in online marketplaces,...