Will Roper spawned a revolution in acquisition as USAF’s procurement chief. Will his innovations survive?
aircraft
A smaller fleet, fatigue tests and continuous depot repairs should keep B-1s flying until the B-21 joins the force.
The first flight of the secretive B-21 bomber has slipped to mid-2022, but the program is moving along well, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office director Randall Walden said in an exclusive interview. The second copy of the B-21, which will be used for structural testing, ...
F-16 fighter jets from the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano Air Base, Italy, practiced combat cooperation with the Romanian Air Force while conducting “all-domain targeting operations” in a Jan. 14 bilateral exercise in the Black Sea region, according to a U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air ...
The Air Force bought 12 more KC-46s under a Jan. 12 contract awarded to Boeing for approximately $1.7 billion. The award modification, the sixth production lot for the program, means Boeing is now on contract for 79 of the new tankers. So far, the company ...
Northrop Grumman bested L3 Harris to win the right to develop a Next-Generation Electronic Warfare system for Air Force F-16s, potentially worth $2.5 billion in production, the company and Air Force officials reported. The development contract is worth $250 million, and if successful, installs could ...
Howard C. “Scrappy” Johnson, a Collier Trophy winner and founder of the Red River Valley Pilots Association—also known as the “River Rats”—died Dec. 9, 2020, at age 100. Johnson flew hundreds of combat missions in Korea and Vietnam. He also served in World War II.
A group of networked bombs failed to hit the right target in the Air Force’s first flight test of its nascent weapon-swarming technology last month, posing a new obstacle as the service tries to speed the concept to the battlefield. On Dec. 15, the Air ...
An independent academic team will assess how ready the F-35 is for full-rate production, and its findings will be integrated into a new program timeline, the Joint Program Office reported. The move follows a full-rate production delay by Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief Ellen M. ...
Two B-52s flew a direct, 36-hour round-trip flight from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to the Persian Gulf this week in the latest of a series of task force missions to the region. The B-52Hs from the 5th Bomb Wing took off from Minot on ...
The U.S. Air Force Advanced Maintenance and Munitions Operations School is changing the way it molds maintenance and logistics experts in response to the service’s embrace of agile combat employment and to help USAF maintain its competitive edge amid great power competition, 57th Wing Commander ...
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” ...
