Unmanned aerial vehicles are fair game for U.S. Special Operations Command’s armed overwatch platform competition, Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife told reporters on Feb. 25. However, the MQ-9 Reaper drone might not be up to the challenge in ...
Development of a new breed of unmanned aircraft is now underway, as three major defense companies earned contracts to start designing a future system known as “LongShot.” The LongShot program wants to create an unmanned weapons porter that can be shot from another plane before ...
The Defense Department is moving out with its first strategy to coordinate and plan for future threats posed by small drones at home and abroad. The Jan. 7 strategy comes after the military has contended with years-long proliferation of quadcopters and other cheap, widely available ...
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 ...
Three companies will move on to flight experiments as part of the Air Force’s Skyborg drone program, the service said Dec. 7. Kratos earned $37.8 million, Boeing earned $25.7 million, and General Atomics earned $14.3 million to continue on in the program, the Air Force ...
The Air Force is in the market for upgrades to its counter-drone technologies, according to an Oct. 16 request for information posted on a federal contracting website. The service is in the early stages of deploying lasers, microwaves, and other weapons more advanced than a ...
Lawmakers have approved a slew of funding shifts the Pentagon requested in June to pay officers, avoid hiring freezes in the Department of the Air Force, and set up U.S. Space Command, among other priorities. The Defense Department routinely asks the House and Senate Appropriations ...
An MQ-9 on Sept. 10 doubled its missile capacity, carrying eight AGM-114 Hellfires for the first time, thanks to a new software upgrade. The 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron flew the Reaper at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., demonstrating the new capability, which is part ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory wants to make its budding swarm of semi-autonomous weapons smarter. “Golden Horde” aims to connect munitions like Boeing’s Small Diameter Bomb I in a swarm that can work through a list of targets on its own, and that could redirect ...
California Air National MQ-9s have flown the length of the entire state, helping to coordinate responses to more than 24 fires that have been burning in the past two months. As of Sept. 28, there have been 7,982 total wildfires, burning more than 3.6 million ...
MQ-9 Reapers, the workhorse drone of America’s two-decade counterterrorism fight in the Middle East and Africa, want to show they’re getting a second wind. The MQ-9 schoolhouse at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., recently rewrote its syllabus to prepare Reaper pilots and sensor operators for ...
Air Force researchers in October will test whether a software version of the service’s developmental weapons swarm can make its way through a combat mission and reroute itself as conditions change. The demonstration is part of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Golden Horde initiative, a ...