August 09, 2010

The Air Force’s plans to field 1,000 semi-autonomous fighter and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones in the coming years made headlines at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference last month. But beyond the service’s signature Collaborative Combat Aircraft and Massed Modular Aircraft programs, a half-dozen or so firms are pitching…

The Space Development Agency is set to launch 21 Tranche 1 data transport satellites on Oct. 5—its fourth Tranche 1 mission since last fall and the first to carry Northrop Grumman-built satellites.

After a two-year experiment that created F-16 “Super Squadrons” at Osan Air Base just 50 miles away from North Korea, the U.S. Air Force has returned some of the fighters to its other base on the peninsula.

Some lawmakers in the Senate are advocating for a more bipartisan approach to paying for the Pentagon’s $185 billion Golden Dome missile defense project, arguing that the effort’s goal of bolstering homeland defenses has support across ideological lines but the process for funding it has been politically charged—leaving the program’s…