Space Force Accelerates On-Orbit Refueling By Courtney Albon As the Space Force makes plans for two on-orbit refueling and maneuver demonstrations in 2027—and closely watches similar government and commercial endeavors—the service official overseeing the effort says he want to take...
DARPA
As the Space Force develops options to respond to real-time threats in orbit by rapidly launching new payloads or tapping into commercial constellations, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for innovative technology that could support those efforts and expand the scope of gap-filler ...
The Air Force wants a new, affordable, air-launched standoff cruise missile ready to field in 2033. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center announced April 6 it will hold an industry day event to conduct market research on the Standoff Attack Weapon, or SoAW, on ...
The Pentagon's research labs are ramping up their search for munitions that can be mass-produced—an effort likely to be buoyed by billions of dollars in the department's new fiscal 2027 budget request and tens of billions in the upcoming years. While the topline information shared ...
Bell Textron is now building a new vertical takeoff and landing X-plane, the X-76, that can achieve jet-like speeds, aimed at special operations missions and cutting ties to traditional runway-based aircraft.
The Air Force has a new X-plane: The X-68A LongShot from General Atomics is an air-launched drone intended to carry additional air-to-air munitions. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been developing LongShot since 2021, and announced on Feb. 17 that flight testing could begin “as early as the end of 2026.”
To prevail in space, the Space Force must be able to challenge adversaries withmultidimensional dilemmas. Space is now a warfighting domain, with growing threats to and increasing operational demands on U.S. space capabilities. New systems and operational concepts that increase...
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week released strategies meant to focus the Pentagon’s “alphabet soup” of innovation organizations and proliferate artificial intelligence—moves that experts say could provide the structure needed to make the military’s efforts to integrate and field new technology more effective.
Four satellite missions will launch in the coming year to demonstrate on-orbit refueling, servicing, and repair capabilities to extend the lives of military satellites. Funded by different Department of Defense entities, each will also entail commercial efforts.
Stealth was a gamble 50 years ago. It’s still a good bet. S tealth technology has given the U.S. military an air of near invincibility for the past 35 years. Overwhelmingly successful in the 1991 Gulf War, and heavily refined...
The Pentagon’s cutting-edge technology research agency awarded cash prizes worth $8.5 million at hacker conference DEFCON last week as part of a contest to build open-source generative AI tools that can help find and patch software vulnerabilities.
A-10 Scar Tissue We wouldn’t be having this discussion about the A-10 if we had optimized the deliveries of the F 35A. The F-35 was designed to replace the F-117, the A-10 and F-15E model, but we truncated the buy...