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.
NGAD
Generational improvements to combat propulsion performance have never been more pressing for the U.S. as it seeks to ensure continued air dominance in tempestuous theaters like the Indo-Pacific. GE Aerospace's XA100 is the most advanced combat engine in the world, and if implemented it would ...
We love letters! Write to us at letters@afa.org. To be published, letters should be timely, relevant and concise. Include your name and location. Letters may be edited for space and the editors have final say on which are published.
Gen. Mark D. Kelly, commander of Air Combat Command, delivered a keynote address on the “Air Force Fighter Enterprise” at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Sept. 21, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Better incorporating the joint force improved the outcome of a wargame held this summer, but a great deal of work will be needed to bring those “trans-domain” changes to fruition, said Air Force futurist Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote. The Global Integrated Wargame, which included ...
China’s approach to developing a sixth-generation fighter is similar to that of the Air Force—a family of systems with an “exponential” improvement in stealth over current platforms—and China both knows how to pursue that technology and is moving rapidly to develop it iteratively, Air Combat ...
The Air Force should take a rapid but iterative, building-block approach to developing the concept of Collaborative Combat Aircraft--uncrewed airplanes that will aid the crewed ones with sensing, jamming and carrying weapons--or it may get the concept expensively wrong, Air Combat Command's Gen. Mark D. ...
The U.S. has lost "conventional overmatch," and needs a sustained investment in combat air forces to restore it, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark Kelly said at ASC 2022. The investment is needed not just to have a quality Air Force but to ensure the ...
Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said much of the recent service-life extension program (SLEP) work on the F-16 has bought years of additional life for the type, and he’s gotten no instructions to start work on its successor, ...
The Air Force wants to retire its F-22, the world’s greatest fighter jet, within the decade. Congress doesn’t agree.
The Air Force doesn’t want its new “collaborative combat aircraft” to be exclusively part of the Next Generation Air Dominance system but is looking at other air- and ground-based platforms to direct such uncrewed airplanes, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. ...
The Air Force propulsion program tasked with producing engines for the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter awarded contracts to a mix of engine makers and aircraft builders Aug. 19, hinting that integration could be a priority in the prototyping process. GE Aviation, Pratt & Whitney, ...