Without working software, the F-35 stealth fighter is a trillion-dollar lawn ornament. Called "a computer that happens to fly" by one former Air Force chief, with algorithms running everything from basic flight controls to long-range targeting, the F-35 runs off eight million lines of code, notes a forthcoming report from a national security thinktank, the Hudson Institute. Yet, co-authors Jason Weiss and Dan Patt told Breaking Defense that even as private-sector software surges ahead, a Pentagon bureaucracy built to handle industrial-age hardware still struggles to get all the fighter’s code to work.
German lawmakers on Dec. 14 gave the go-ahead for a series of defense procurement projects, including the purchase of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, as Berlin begins to spend a huge fund to strengthen the country’s military. Germany in mid-March announced plans to replace aging Tornado bomber jets with 35 F-35A Lightning II aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. That was one of a series of projects worth a total of nearly 13 billion euros (nearly $13.8 billion) that have now been approved by parliament’s budget committee.
"Shockwaves swept the Washington security establishment this fall upon hearing the U.S. Air Force is going to retire F-15C/Ds based at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan, without a direct replacement, instead reverting to a rotational presence. Members of Congress even threatened legislation to block the move. Bottom line: This development should not surprise anyone," writes retired USAF Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and former deputy chief of staff for operations.
Many Airmen are familiar with the saying "regulations are written in blood," which reminds them to follow safety regulations or suffer the consequences. But in extraordinary circumstances, sometimes the safety regs must be put aside in order to accomplish the mission. The crew of the Air Force C-17 transport jet callsign Reach 651 found themselves in such circumstances while in the air over Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar on Aug. 22, 2021. "It is completely against protocol," Senior Airman Kimberly Heiser told Task & Purpose about what she and her crew had to do that day. "That is not something we’ve ever done."
The Pentagon’s military intelligence agency wants to build a digital common space so it can better share and secure top-secret information with international partners. "It has become commonplace where we develop everything in a no-foreign environment, and that model needs to flip," said Doug Cossa, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief information officer, said Dec. 13.
The Franco-German-Spanish led Future Combat Air System (FCAS) next generation fighter effort will not be following the approach of the rival Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) by opening up partner nation and industrial collaborations to non-European parties. GCAP merged the U.K. Tempest and Japan’s F-X sixth generation fighter programs under an “international coalition” agreement last week, with Italy also a signatory to the new pact. FCAS, on the other hand, will continue as a fully European initiative, according to Airbus officials, at least for the foreseeable future.
To foster artificial intelligence the U.S. Department of Defense can deploy and rely on, a foundation of “really high-quality data” must first be laid, according to the Pentagon’s AI czar, Craig Martell. Such a task, he said Dec. 13 at the DODIIS Worldwide Conference in Texas, has become his main charge some eight months into leading the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.
The U.S. Air Force and Navy are to create joint expeditionary, land-based electronic attack squadrons with the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserve under Section 121 of the House-Senate conference agreement of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
The U.S. Air Force’s B-1 bomber community has become primarily focused on executing very long-range land-attack and anti-ship strike missions utilizing stand-off cruise missiles as the supersonic swing-wing jets steadily enter the twilight of their careers. These sorties, which increasingly include nonstop flights to and from bases in the United States that can last nearly 40 hours, point to the kinds of operations the service likely expects to conduct with its new B-21 Raider stealth bombers.
Chaos. In one word, that’s how the U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider gunship crews of Shadow 77 and Shadow 78 described the scene of Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15, 2021. For the crews of Shadow 77 and 78, the mission to support the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan during Operation Freedom's Sentinel would go on to last nearly 30 hours combined—resulting in the evacuation of roughly 2,000 Americans. Those members of the 73rd SOS were honored for their efforts as recipients of the 2021 MacKay Trophy during a ceremony at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Dec. 7.
Before the turkey even has a chance to get cold on Thanksgiving Day, mad shoppers begin camping outside Best Buy stores as Mariah Carey’s titular "All I Want For Christmas Is You" makes its annual climb to the top of the charts. Hallmark, the greeting-card-company-turned-Christmas media titan, also begins its barrage of holiday movies. Typically, that includes a steady stream of military Christmas movies so saccharine your teeth might fall out just reading the titles. We’d be remiss, of course, if we didn’t provide a ranking of these cheesiest militarized Christmas movies.