A T-6A Texan II trainer aircraft landed short of the runway June 4 at Vance AFB, Okla., and was damaged. Vance officials said in a release that the one instructor pilot and one student on board exited from the aircraft without injuries. The aircraft is assigned to Vance’s 71st Flying Training Wing. The incident is being investigated. USAF lost two Texan airframes last November in a midair collision, but none of the pilots were seriously injured. In April, the Texan II became USAF’s sole platform for specialized undergraduate pilot training with the retirement of the final T-37 in that role.
The long-standing method for communicating data down from space via radio frequencies has the potential to create deadly data bottlenecks that could slow and stymie future operations, according to a new report from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The report makes the case for combining RF with optical communications…