A KC-46A Pegasus flew a 36-hour nonstop mission that covered more than 16,000 miles. Crews traveled from Pease Air National Guard Base, N.H., over North America, Hawaii, and Guam, before retracing their path and landing back at their home base. The flight was the longest ...
As part of Air & Space Forces Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, we interviewed all of the living former Chiefs of Staff. In this part of the series, we feature CSAF No. 20 Gen. Mark A. Welsh.
The U.S. is "clearly committed" to its plans to significantly improve its missile defense of Guam, a senior defense official said, expanding on a key theme of the recently released Missile Defense Review. The U.S. territory in the Western Pacific is a major U.S. military ...
The U.S. has lost "conventional overmatch," and needs a sustained investment in combat air forces to restore it, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark Kelly said at ASC 2022. The investment is needed not just to have a quality Air Force but to ensure the ...
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has two new squadrons of F-35s at its disposal in Alaska just as “quite a bit of action” has taken place in the combatant command’s area of responsibility and the “advanced threats” there are becoming “more lethal,” said the squadrons’ wing commander, ...
Ukraine’s air space has been contested for more than five months, replete with advanced Russian fighter jets and near-universal Russian surface-to-air missile coverage that make penetration by aging Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29s and Su-25s both risky and dangerous. For the duration of that time, Ukrainian ...
Just five U.S. aircraft remain to be certified with the KC-46 tanker for operational missions designated by U.S. Transportation Command, Air Mobility Command said. The new tanker is certified for some 97 percent of mission taskings now, but it's unclear when the next capability release ...
The Air Force is asking Congress to retire 150 airplanes in its fiscal 2023 budget, including 33 of its advanced F-22 fighters, but it would also hand off 100 MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft to another government agency and buy more than 82 other new ...
Lockheed Martin thinks its 17-plus years of demonstrations with unmanned aircraft with various degrees of autonomy will give it a leg up as the Air Force seeks to build new classes of tactical and strategic uncrewed aircraft, company aeronautics vice president Greg Ulmer said in ...
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's growing strategic arsenal have "pretty well put to bed" the debate over whether the U.S. should preserve all three legs of the nuclear triad, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. Although he would not discuss particulars about the unreleased ...
New unmanned fighter and bomber projects won't unravel the Air Force's "4+1" combat aircraft roadmap, Secretary Frank Kendall said at the AFA Warfare Symposium. He provided broad outlines of the unmanned bomber and a cost target but said the project will be classified.
The Air Force trimmed 120 airplanes from its fleet in fiscal 2021, gaining the most aircraft among its F-35 fighter squadrons and giving up the most from its B-1 bomber units, according to data provided by the Air Force. With puts and takes, the Air ...