The Air Force’s E-4B Nightwatch, commonly referred to as the ‘Doomsday Plane,” is officially entering The Matrix. The service is nearing the end of a multi-year project to directly scan and digitize every inch of an E-4B, inside and out, to create virtual reality training modules that its crew and maintainers can be trained on, according to a news story from the Air Force’s 55th Wing.
Much of the focus of the trilateral pact between Australia, the U.S. and the U.K., known as AUKUS, has been on military-to-military cooperation, but a group of more than 400 investors is establishing a parallel effort to increase collaboration among the countries’ private sectors.
The Pentagon plans to throw the weight of senior leadership behind the next step in its Replicator initiative: developing “acceleration pathways” for specific systems that meet operational criteria recently identified by the DOD’s number two official, a department spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has launched an investigation into the secrecy surrounding Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization for complications that arose from a surgery for prostate cancer, a diagnosis that was also secret until this week. Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., sent letters Jan. 9 to Austin, his chief of staff, and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks demanding a stack of documents and answers about why Congress, the White House, and most of the Defense Department weren’t informed sooner.
A federal watchdog will review the safety history of the U.S. military’s V-22 Osprey fleet following a deadly crash that killed eight special operations airmen off the coast of Japan late last year. The Government Accountability Office’s managing director for congressional relations, A. Nicole Clowers, confirmed the probe in a Dec. 19 letter in response to a request from House Armed Services Committee members Reps. Mike Waltz and John Garamendi.
Lockheed Martin has hit a huge milestone in F-35 Joint Strike Fighter production. However, that accomplishment, while outstanding, is complicated by the ongoing saga surrounding the development and testing of Tech Refresh-3 (TR-3) hardware configuration. TR-3 underpins the F-35's future capabilities, known collectively as Block 4. Delays with TR-3 mean that F-35s are being parked and not delivered after they are constructed, waiting for these features. So is the case for the 1,000th F-35.
A U.S. Airman in England was severely injured on duty when he was hit head-on by a maintenance van on the flight line at RAF Lakenheath, Air Force officials confirmed Jan. 10, following posts about the accident shared over the weekend on social media. The Airman was taken off base for treatment, 48th Fighter Wing spokesperson Maj. Keavy Rake said.
Families of U.S. service members who die while on duty overseas face unimaginable grief, as well as a lot of questions that need to be answered to bring their loved one home. A vast network of caring folks based at Dover Air Force Base, Del., help them through that process.