Thursday, April 25, 2024
Courtney Albon was senior editor for aviation and space at Inside Defense until December 2021. She covered the Air Force since 2012, reporting largely on space programs and fighter aircraft acquisition, development and budget from inside Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and from military installations around the United States. Courtney previously worked as a general assignment reporter at The Ashland Times-Gazette in Ashland, OH, covering education and local government. She graduated from American University in 2008, where she studied journalism and sociology.
A degraded B-52 radar could have implications for the performance of the Air-Launched Cruise Missile, the Air Force told Congress in a recent report explaining its reasons for pursuing a non-developmental replacement for the aging radar system.
The Air Force this week took another step toward replacing the Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine with a domestic alternative, releasing a draft request for proposals meant to support launch system prototyping efforts.
The Air Force plans to release a formal invitation to industry this week to participate in a light-attack experiment to showcase low-cost capability that could supplement the service's fighter jet capacity.
The Air Force's decision this week to award SpaceX its second national security space launch services mission -- a win over longtime provider United Launch Alliance -- came down to cost, a service official confirmed Wednesday.
The Trump administration has been vocal about its plans for a larger Army and a bigger Navy fleet, but has remained relatively quiet about its plans for Air Force modernization, leaving analysts wondering what that will mean for the Air Force in the fiscal year 2018 budget.
The Air Force on Tuesday announced that military space launch newcomer, SpaceX, will support a second GPS III launch.
Some must-reads from this week's issue of Inside the Air Force.
The Air Force is moving forward with plans to hire commercial satellite operators to run its Wideband Global Satellite Communications constellation and intends to issue a request for proposals for the effort in May.
The Air Force recently approved an Operationally Responsive Space mission that will launch a small satellite to address a critical gap in military weather capability.
The Air Force expects to complete its assessment of last September's SpaceX launch failure in April, but the service said this week that based on preliminary findings, it concurs with the company's conclusion that the explosion was caused by a problem with the launcher's oxygen tank.
The Air Force confirmed Wednesday it "recently" completed a preliminary design review of the largely classified B-21 bomber program.
The Air Force and Boeing have agreed on a new acquisition program baseline schedule for the KC-46 tanker that moves the start of initial operational test and evaluation from May 2016 to November 2017 and pushes a full-rate production decision back more than two years from June 2017 to August 2019.
The Air Force will continue with plans to launch a bridge capability for a Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite reaching the end of its service life, despite the service's recent decision to re-think its acquisition strategy for a follow-on constellation.
House and Senate appropriators plan to cut about $158 million from the Joint Strike Fighter's Block 4 follow-on modernization program -- calling the funds "early to need" -- despite warnings from the Air Force that funding reductions would slow critical early development.
The head of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command said this week the service is studying the possibility of using aerial refuelers as a data fusion tool.
The new Ground-Based Training System that will join the T-X jet as part of a new Advanced Pilot Training family of systems brings technological leap that Air Force training officials expect to usher in in a more efficient, innovative training program.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working on a space battle-management command-and-control effort that, if successful, could test and feed new software tools for use by the Air Force and other space organizations to help them better use information they receive on the space environment.
Some must-reads from this week's issue of Inside the Air Force.
A key upgrade to the legacy GPS ground control segment's cybersecurity capabilities is providing a baseline architecture for a separate ground control modernization effort that will allow the older system to operate GPS III satellites until the next-generation control segment comes online.
An ongoing, enterprise look at the Air Force's multidomain command-and-control capabilities will likely inform the service's path to replace its E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System with what could be a more disaggregated, networked architecture.