WORLD: Readiness: Safety pause over, B-2 flies; New bill to lock in Guard Fighter Squadrons; DARPA's X-65 aircraft.
DARPA
A groundbreaking aircraft being designed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency now has an experimental designation—the X-65. DARPA announced the “X” designation on its social media accounts May 15, a little less than five months after the agency announced it had selected Boeing subsidiary ...
The Air Force’s ARRW hypersonic missile program will end after another couple of tests, service acquisition executive Andrew Hunter told the House Armed Services Committee. His written testimony affirmed remarks from Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall that the boost-glide ARRW will be supplanted by the ...
While the Air Force released scant details about the latest test of its AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon late last week, Secretary Frank Kendall told a Congressional panel it was “not a success”—and given ARRW’s checkered test history overall, Kendall indicated the service may shift focus ...
DARPA and the Air Force conducted the final test of their scramjet-powered Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile, DARPA announced Jan. 30, and said the program’s “findings will now be used in follow-on efforts.” The Air Force is moving forward with two hypersonic weapons—the AGM-183 Air-Launched ...
Air Force leaders today are making significant decisions about the future force, betting on the promise of autonomous collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) as a means to increase the Air Force’s combat capacity.
Aiming to build a usable system throughout the experimental and prototyping phase of the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile program led to Raytheon and Northrop Grumman’s win of the program, company officials told reporters. The partners have already invested in production capacity in 14 states, they ...
The Defense Department plans to propose new workforce “solutions” to Congress in 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks said in a virtual address to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conference. Needs differ across the department, Hicks said. “Some organizations have a good ...
The Tactical Boost Glide program and the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept still have value, even though the programs they support are either in source selection or flight testing, said Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, head of Air Force Materiel Command. The Air Force is pursuing the ...
DARPA is going to keep working on its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) missile, even though the program for which it’s meant to be a technology pathfinder is already in source selection. A HAWC demonstrator flew successfully this month. The next phase of the program ...
The ultimate goal was to take off from Earth, fly a mission through space, reenter the atmosphere, and land on a runway.
A framework for understanding and developing autonomy in unmanned aircraft. The Air Force is rapidly evolving new concepts for teaming manned fighters and bombers with autonomous unmanned aircraft to perform strikes, counter-air, electronic warfare, and other missions.