A leak in a cracked oil line caused an RQ-4’s engine to fail during a ferry flight to the Middle East in June 2018, and because the operations aircrews did not properly plan divert airfields en route, the Global Hawk crashed into the sea near ...
RPA
The Air Force wants its follow-on to the venerable MQ-9 Reaper to move beyond the surveillance and strike roles, and be able to conduct air-to-air and base defense missions with increased autonomy to lessen the number of people in the loop, the service’s top acquisition ...
The Air Force may not have enough remotely piloted aircraft pilots and sensor operators to stand up a new wing in 2024, as it struggles to retain personnel and increase the size of its instructor pilot cadre, the Government Accountability Office says in a new ...
It's time to stop giving China a helping hand.
Drone pilots and their sensor operator partners are used to life in enclosed spaces. They sit side-by-side in ground control stations, or cockpits, that measure less than 200 square feet, but those close quarters make social distancing in the age of coronavirus a challenge. Still, ...
The Air Force’s sole center for undergraduate remotely piloted aircraft training, located at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, was renamed “Crawford Hall” on Nov. 13, 2019, in honor of the late Ollie Crawford, a World War II pilot and Air Force Association charter member who ...
There is still more work to be done to fully realize the power of RPA technology.
Congress approved relatively modest funding for the Air Force’s main drone programs in fiscal 2020 while continuing to endorse investments in new kinds of unmanned aircraft.
The Air Force's 402nd Software Engineering Group on Dec. 10 received the 2019 Rear Adm. Grace M. Hopper Award for Software Maintenance Excellence at the Secretary of Defense Maintenance Awards in Spokane, Wash., according to a Dec. 16 Air Force release. This was the first ...
The Air Force Research Laboratory recently conducted a successful test of a next-generation, customizable remotely piloted aircraft, flying the drone for about two and a half days earlier this month. The Ultra Long Endurance Aircraft Platform, known as Ultra LEAP, is a commercial airframe converted ...
