The Air Force has handed out a $334 million contract to contractor Leidos for “Mayhem,” the secretive program aimed at developing a larger class of hypersonic system, the Pentagon announced Dec. 16. The contract comes more than two years after the Air Force first began asking ...
A new lab building at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., will house some of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s “irreplaceable” equipment for testing how electronic spacecraft parts will likely stand up against radiation in space. Also this year at Kirtland, AFRL opened the Skywave Technology ...
The Air Force is considering making aerodynamic retrofits to one of its flagship cargo planes in an effort to save on fuel and be kinder to the environment. As part of a project that has been in the works for years, the Air Force Research ...
The Air Force will make a “significant investment” in uncrewed, collaborative combat aircraft in the fiscal 2024 budget, a quartet of generals announced at the Pentagon. They insisted that the technology is mature enough to move aggressively toward a program that will yield operational capability ...
A cubesat sent to blaze a trail for NASA’s next space station arrived in lunar orbit Nov. 13—the first cubesat known to ever have done so—after a voyage that proved tense at times. Meanwhile the small company that created the tiny spacecraft secured a new ...
Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, moderated a discussion on "The Future of Propulsion" with Michael Gregg, director of the Aerospace Systems Directorate; Shawn Phillips, chief of the Rocket Propulsion Division; John Sneden, director of the Propulsion Directorate; and ...
The Air Force plans to complete testing of a full-scale blended wing body cargo/tanker aircraft within four years, according to the department’s new Climate Action Plan. The demonstrator could be a prototype for a future operational mobility aircraft or family of aircraft, and the plan ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Test Center will host their first-ever summit on autonomy, a weeklong session this fall to dive into the concept that is key to the service's future strategy. The Defense Department is accelerating its push for autonomous ...
Half of the Air Force’s billets that call for advanced academic degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math are either unfilled or filled by someone who doesn’t hold the degree. At the same time, the Air Force has the fewest general officers with advanced STEM ...
Skyborg, the Air Force’s effort to develop an artificial intelligence-enabled system to control unmanned aircraft, is ready to “graduate” and contribute to key programs such as the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, a top program executive officer said. But while the so-called “Vanguard” ...
A new cubesat built and operated in house at the Air Force Research Laboratory is set to demonstrate cognitive, beyond-line-of-sight radio networking via satellite while also giving AFRL’s researchers “intimate knowledge” of how the satellite works to apply in the future. Its name Recurve refers ...
Military and defense industry officials are proud to say the Global Positioning System of satellites has entrenched itself as the world standard of position, navigation, and timing. But new threats—and some futuristic considerations—are leading some to think bigger than GPS when it comes to the ...