Twenty-five years ago this week, a pair of B-1B Lancers took off from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and circumnavigated the globe without stopping. The 36-hour and 13-minute flight covered 20,100 miles, including six aerial refuelings.
The Air Force’s fleet in fiscal 2019 maintained an overall mission capable rate of 70.27 percent, a slight increase from the previous year. Although some key combat aircraft, such as the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor, which hovers just over 50 percent, sustained low capability rates, service ...
Within just four days, the Air Force sent nuclear-capable bombers on long-distance training flights to Europe and the Pacific, while B-1s flew their own long-range missions in both regions. On May 11, B-1s from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., flew from their home base to ...
The Air Force is reshuffling the oversight of its fighters, bombers, and mobility aircraft, separating fighters and bombers and putting tankers and the Open Skies recap program together with other airlift programs. The reorganization is meant to put greater emphasis on bombers and extract the ...
Air Force Global Strike Command will regularly rotate a small number of bombers to the Pacific and Middle East theaters to maintain a regular deterrence presence and to conduct combat operations as needed, but it will no longer operate out of bases such as al-Udeid ...
The Air Force announced April 17 it will no longer base strategic bombers outside of the continental United States, marking an end to the service's 16-year continuous bomber presence at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. But before the last bomber left the island, USAF reminded ...
A new-design aircraft to fill the arsenal plane concept is in the offing at Air Force Global Strike Command, according to its commander, Gen. Tim Ray. In a press telecon, he discussed the concept, along with USAF's preferred air-launched hypersonic missile, recovery in the B-1 ...
Either Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, or Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., will be the first base to host the B-21 Raider bomber. The service announced the start of environmental impact analyses in both locations to see which will be first to operate the Raider. ...
The Air Force’s decision to cut a major upgrade to the B-2 bomber’s defenses shows the military is accepting near-term risk to free up funding for future capabilities, the head of U.S. Strategic Command told lawmakers Feb. 13. The Air Force’s budget proposal winds down ...
The Air Force has canceled the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon as a budget move, shifting emphasis to the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon. While both are Lockheed Martin programs, the HCSW was being developed by the Space division in Huntsville, Alabama, while the ARRW is being ...