Will Roper spawned a revolution in acquisition as USAF’s procurement chief. Will his innovations survive?
AvGeek
A smaller fleet, fatigue tests and continuous depot repairs should keep B-1s flying until the B-21 joins the force.
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 ...
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 ...
The last of five F-16s damaged in a severe 2018 storm while deployed to Kuwait returned to service on Jan. 6 after years of work at the boneyard. Twelve F-16 Block 50CMs and 333 personnel from the 148th Fighter Wing of the Minnesota Air National ...
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” ...
Air Force MQ-9s have a new permanent home in Romania. U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced Jan. 4 that Reapers and about 90 Airmen are now based at Romanian Air Force Base 71 at Campia Turzii. The surveillance and attack drones are assigned to the ...
The Air Force Weapons School has recognized Capt. Woodruff “Thunder” Johnson, an F-15E Weapons Officer assigned to the 494th Fighter Squadron at RAF Lakenheath, U.K., with its 2020 Robbie Risner Award. The annual award—whose namesake, Brig. Gen. James Robinson “Robbie” Risner, was the first living ...
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 ...
