Air Force officials are still looking to perfect directed-energy weapons to use against the low-tech threat of small drones before scaling up lasers and microwaves to take out cruise missiles. The Air Force’s high-power microwave weapon known as the Tactical High-Power Microwave Operational Responder, or ...
Will Roper
The Air Force awarded contracts to 18 additional companies this week to develop and connect a plethora of technologies as part of the Advanced Battle Management System, after the first round of 28 contracts went out May 29. The ABMS network looks to connect the ...
The big fighter gamble.
Just a day after the Air Force announced that a full-rate production decision on the KC-46 tanker will have to wait until late fiscal 2024 due to extended testing of the redesigned Remote Vision System for tanking operations, the service’s acquisition executive offered his hope ...
The Next-Generation Air Dominance program's acquisition strategy will be finished this summer, service acquisition chief Will Roper reported June 9 at a Mitchell Institute Aerospace Nation streaming event. He's assigned a team to assess whether the "Digital Century Series" model for the aircraft will cost ...
The Air Force's Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program has passed its preliminary design review, clearing the way for an award of the engineering and manufacturing development contract by the end of September. If all goes as planned, the new intercontinental ballistic missiles will be deployed to ...
Additive manufacturing is changing the way many products are prototyped and developed. But in most cases, its use has been limited to peripheral components. Not anymore.
A potential “clean sheet” Arsenal Plane for Air Force Global Strike Command could be done with the Digital Century Series approach, but the budget likely won’t allow for such a new start in the near future, service acquisition chief Will Roper said. Roper said he ...
The Air Force plans a high/low mix of rocket-boosted and air-breathing hypersonic missiles to give adversaries a troublesome and expensive defense problem, service acquisition executive Will Roper said May 14. While the ARRW missile is on track for operational service at the end of fiscal ...
The Air Force’s Acquisition COVID-19 Task Force recently executed a new, $126 million contract to 3M to ramp up production of N95 masks to increase the supply chain for the in-demand masks and resupply the Strategic National Stockpile. The contract uses funding from the Coronavirus ...
For every dollar the Air Force spends on new weapons systems, 70 cents goes to keeping them ready for action. For if, as Napoleon famously observed, an army “marches on its stomach,” then it can also be said that an air force flies on its ...
The Pentagon and the primes step up in the face of the pandemic.
