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.
Heather Penney
Heather Penney of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies moderated a discussion on "Manned-Unmanned Teaming: Myth and Reality" with Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, Mike Benitez of Shield AI, Robert Winkler of Kratos, and ...
While collaborative combat aircraft are among Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s “operational imperatives,” Air Combat Command was already working on the idea, the Air Force reported. Senior USAF leaders at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference said they were looking for a swift pace of ...
Ukraine needs USAF aircraft.
The weapons the U.S. and NATO have been providing Ukraine are not enough to reverse Russia’s invasion, and the process of providing F-16s from U.S. stocks should begin as soon as possible, analysts said in an AFA Mitchell Institute online seminar. Panelists also said the ...
It's time to fix the perception of RPA exportation.
The Air Force’s “4+1” fighter plan for the 2020s, unveiled in recent months, will leave the service with a fleet that’s too small and improperly configured to deal with peer threats. What’s needed is a plan that emphasizes stealth aircraft; rapidly retires non-stealthy and expensive-to-maintain ...
Then-1st Lt. Heather Penney's mission on 9/11 was to bring any airliner that didn't respond to commands down, causing as few casualties as possible on the ground. For Penney, an F-16 fighter pilot assigned to the District of Columbia Air National Guard's 121st Fighter Squadron, ...
Introducing unknowns to how adversaries understand U.S. operations can throw a wrench into adversarial decision-making.
America needs an offset strategy built on speed, adaptability and a robust, dynamic aerospace industry.
Aerospace experts offered a peek into how joint all-domain command and control might begin changing the Air Force over the next few years, during RAND Corp.’s West Coast Aerospace Forum on Dec. 2. Expect the upcoming fiscal 2022 and 2023 budgets to majorly accelerate combat ...
U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles are the best in the world, but allied nations are barred from acquiring those systems under a 1987 voluntary non-proliferation agreement that classifies them as equivalent to nuclear weapons. Now a new report from the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies argues ...