The Air Force is investing in electronic aircraft, hoping to jumpstart a nascent market.
AFWERX
Will Roper spawned a revolution in acquisition as USAF’s procurement chief. Will his innovations survive?
The Air Force’s Rapid Sustainment Office is again reaching out to industry for new approaches to three-dimensional scanning so it can replicate aircraft parts that are no longer in production. On Jan. 4, the RSO published a call for a “cutting-edge, automated 3D scanning system” ...
The Air Force’s science advisers say the service needs to make its approach to cutting-edge “Vanguard” programs more concrete and repeatable—and to ditch them when things don’t work out. USAF leaders asked the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to grade how the Vanguard concept is ...
The Air Force will flight test the U.S. military’s first hypersonic missile this month, Air Force acquisition boss Will Roper said Dec. 14 at the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum. Speaking on the theme of “From Acquisition to Lethality,” Roper also described progress on the ...
The Air Force's technology incubator, which doles out more than 1,000 small research contracts worth up to $50,000 each year, unveiled an advance look at its 2021 programs during its virtual Accelerate event, Dec. 7-11—the first organized by the newly relaunched AFWERX 2.0. AFWERX 2.0 ...
AFWERX’s contribution to the national Covid-19 pandemic response seems destined to enter the annals of heroic procurement tales. But, it almost didn’t happen.
USAF is interested in information about “commercially available wearable technologies” that can allow it to monitor service members’ “biometric data”—such as changes in heart rate and oxygen levels—to help it detect COVID-19 early, according to a Nov. 10 request for information published by Air Force ...
A team of five female Airmen last week evaluated a flight suit designed to be more comfortable and functional for women pilots battling gravitational forces in the cockpit. High-speed pilots wear G-suits to avoid health issues when they rapidly accelerate in flight, but since 2001, ...
The Air Force is making it easier for women to be aviators—and to keep flying should they choose to have children.
The Air Force is calling on small businesses to pitch new technologies the service can help nurture into “war-winning” capabilities, service acquisition chief Will Roper said Oct. 26. These “Skyshots”—something short of “Moon Shots”—would be comparable to USAF's flying car initiative: requiring sustained investment that ...
The Air Force's new senior leadership team, in its first trip together, visited the service’s effort to create a “flying car” for both military and civilian use. Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Chief Master Sergeant ...
