It would cost $7 billion to keep flying the 32 Block 20 F-22 aircraft the Air Force wants to retire in its fiscal 2024 budget request—money it feels must be spent on the Next Generation Air Dominance system, the USAF's top programmer said.
Teams of autonomous vehicles collaborating with a crewed airplane, in which each aircraft in the formation performs a unique mission on its own, is far more effective than the so-called “loyal wingman” approach, in which a piloted aircraft pairs with just one similarly-equipped, autonomous multimission ...
The range of current Air Force weapons compels pilots of stealth aircraft to get too close to their targets, risking that they’ll be seen and shot down, Air Combat Command boss Gen. Mark D. Kelly said Sep. 22. The service must have longer-range “fifth-generation weapons” ...
An F-15C Eagle set a record for the longest air-to-air kill, but we won’t know what the record is. In March, an F-15C fired an AIM-120D AMRAAM at a BQM-167 targeting drone in the longest known air-to-air missile shot to date, resulting in a “kill” ...
An Air Force F-16 recently shot down a targeting drone with an AGR-20A Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rocket queued by the Viper’s targeting pod for the first time in a demonstration of future cruise missile defense.
