The Air Force revamped its F-16 Basic Course following a 2017 incident where an inexperienced student pilot strafed the wrong target and killed a military contractor. Now, students must fly their first nighttime close air support sortie with an instructor pilot in the rear seat ...
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 ...
An MQ-9 Reaper assigned to the 49th Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., was damaged when it skidded off the runway on Sept. 2, the base announced. The incident remains under investigation.
Air Combat Command on July 21 awarded three companies contracts worth up to $433.6 million to provide 5,418 annual sorties of adversary air support at five bases over the next four and a half years, a command spokesperson told Air Force Magazine. The contracts with ...
Air Combat Command boss Gen. James M. Holmes is traveling to flying wings to speak with commanders about safety and training in response to a recent pattern of accidents across the Air Force's fighter fleet, a command spokesperson told Air Force Magazine. “The recent incidents ...
The 54th Fighter Group at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., is pressing pause on some of its flying operations so it can “assess and reset” following a July 13 F-16 crash at the installation, base spokesperson Denise Ottaviano told Air Force Magazine on July 14. ...
A U.S. Air Force pilot flying an Afghan Air Force A-29 Super Tucano safely ejected before the aircraft crashed during a July 9 training flight in Afghanistan. U.S. Forces-Afghanistan said the pilot was recovered after the crash. While the cause of the mishap is under ...
Flight testing of top-priority programs is ramping back up this week at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and other locations around the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Arnold Bunch Jr. said. New procedures are balancing urgent operational needs with the safety of ...
US Special Operations Command is moving forward with its armed overwatch plan, independent of the Air Force’s light attack experiment, inviting industry for a briefing in March on a proposal to buy an estimated 75 aircraft. The aircraft would “provide Special Operations Forces deployable and ...
The draft 2020 defense policy bill prohibits the Air Force from transferring any low-rate initial production F-35 strike fighters to the adversary air role until the Chief of Staff submits a report to Congress detailing the service’s plan for modernizing its organic aggressor fleet. “It ...
Air Force officials overseeing the F-16 Fighting Falcon program say they’ve seen no data that indicates emerging safety issues with the fighter jet, though more than a dozen have crashed since 2014. “Mishap findings and recommendations are constantly reviewed and analyzed by the F-16 SPO, ...