The schedule appears to have changed a little, but Air Force Special Operations Command is still working on developing an amphibious capability to go on its MC-130J aircraft. It has been roughly a year since Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife first detailed AFSOC’s plan ...
The KC-46A can now pass fuel to almost 70 percent of aircraft that request aerial refueling, Air Mobility Command announced. The newest aircraft on the list include C-130 Special Operations variants, the C-5M Super Galaxy, and the E-3G Sentry AWACS.
Air Force Special Operations Command needs a “true amphibious” platform to enhance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific theater and plans a demo flight of an amphibious version of the MC-130J by late 2022. AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. James C. "Jim" Slife said at the Air Force ...
The House Appropriations Committee released its draft of the fiscal 2022 defense budget on June 29, adding C-130s and MQ-9s to the Air Force’s budget request while leaving the service’s request for F-35s and F-15EXs untouched.
The Air Force is asking to retire 201 airplanes and buy 91 new ones in its fiscal 2022 budget request, representing a net decrease of 110 airplanes. The fighter fleet would drop by 77 aircraft, and the RQ-4 Global Hawk fleet would be cut by ...
U.S. Airmen and aircraft from two bases in England recently deployed to Aalborg, Denmark for a two-week, multilateral agile combat employment (ACE) exercise hosted by the Combined Special Operations Air Task Group. Agile combat employment is a budding USAF strategy in which the service can ...
The Air Force and Rolls-Royce are finalizing a contract for new Virtual Reality Maintenance Training Software for the C-130J’s AE 2100 engines, giving Airmen the chance to virtually “break open” and train on power plants as opposed to working on an aircraft’s real engine. The ...
Air Mobility Command is testing how its workhorse strategic airlifter can not only carry in combat weapons systems, but also directly contribute to a fight by dropping bombs and providing targeting data for artillery. As part of the high-tech Advanced Battle Management System “onramp” evaluations ...
An F-15 from Kadena Air Base, Japan, dropped an “eagle claw” at some point during a training flight Aug. 4, and the 18th Wing is looking into what caused the part to fall. The part is a C-shaped metal object that is about 7 inches ...
U.S. Air Force jets and Navy ships on Aug. 2 held a joint training exercise in the Black Sea near Russia’s borders together for the second time in two weeks, aiming to fine-tune their collaboration in a potential conflict. Four F-16s from the 31st Fighter ...
USAF F-16s, KC-135s, MC-130Js, and MQ-9s linked up with U.S. Navy aircraft and ships as well as support from U.S. Space Command during a large-scale exercise in the Black Sea on July 22. The mission in Eastern Europe, with Russia watching, “was designed to train ...
A year after the House Armed Services Committee passed its fiscal 2020 defense policy bill in an unusually partisan fashion, the panel appears to be taking a step back from major fireworks and aerospace programmatic shifts in its 2021 legislation. The full committee’s version of ...