Wednesday, May 8, 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.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said this week he is confident the service will have enough F-35 maintainers to meet the Joint Strike Fighter's initial operational capability requirement in 2016 -- despite past concerns that retaining the A-10 Warthog fleet would make the target unreachable.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Jan. 14 that the service plans to apply a new cost capability analysis model to four key acquisition programs: the Long-Range Standoff weapon, the Space-Based Infrared System Follow-on, the next-generation trainer, and the Multi-Adaptive Podded System.
The U.S. Federal Claims Court this week denied a motion by the United Launch Alliance to dismiss SpaceX's lawsuit against an Air Force contract awarded under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program.
The Defense Department announced Jan. 8 that it in 2020 it will begin basing two F-35A squadrons at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the U.K.
After missing its goal to certify SpaceX as the first new entrant to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program by the end of 2014, the Air Force is now pushing to complete that process by mid-2015, according to a top service official.
Air Force Space Command expects to sign a draft requirements document for the Space-Based Space Surveillance follow-on program by the end of January, according to industry day slides released in December.
The Air Force and Boeing completed the first flight of the KC-46 program this week, pushing the program forward into a rigorous testing phase.
As the Air Force begins to assess the language in the still-pending fiscal year 2015 defense policy bill, it is looking closely at provisions related to legacy C-130 aircraft upgrades so that it can work to make the platform compliant with changing Federal Aviation Administration requirements, according to the director of the Air National Guard.
The Air Force expects the development price tag for the KC-46 tanker will outpace the contract's ceiling by more than $1.4 billion -- an increase of about $441 million over last year's projections.
The Air Force anticipates the total cost of Raytheon's next-generation Global Positioning System operational control segment development contract will surpass $1.7 billion, about $100 million above the cost negotiated when the program was restructured this summer.
As concerns grow about an increasingly contested space environment, the Defense Science Board is launching two studies aimed at exploring new technologies and architectures that increase resilience in military space programs.
Stringent information assurance requirements are driving delays to the next-generation Global Positioning System ground control station, according to the head of Air Force Space Command.
While SpaceX and the Air Force have missed a Dec. 1 target for certifying the company to compete as a new entrant in the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, the commander of Air Force Space Command said Dec. 5 that he expects the company to complete the certification process by the end of the month.
The concurrent efforts to draw down from Afghanistan, combat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and provide humanitarian assistance in the Ebola crisis have placed a unique, though not exorbitant, demand on U.S. Transportation Command to coordinate air, ground and sea-based mobility.
The F-35 Joint Program Office is anticipating its life-cycle sustainment cost estimate will drop 15 percent over last year's projection to approximately $780 billion.
House and Senate negotiators have developed a compromise defense authorization bill that would provide the Air Force with an additional $334 million to keep the A-10 Warthog flying through fiscal year 2015.
The Defense Department has awarded F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin its eighth low-rate initial production contract, valued at $4.7 billion for 43 airframes, according to a Nov. 21 press release from the joint program office.
The Air Force is working closely with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to develop its recommended way-ahead for a new domestic rocket engine, and a top service acquisition official says those details will be unveiled as part of its fiscal year 2016 budget request.
Republican leaders on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said this week they do not support the Air Force's recent proposal to retire 72 A-10s in fiscal year 2015 instead of the 110 proposed in its FY-15 budget request sent to Congress earlier this year.
The Air Force is floating to lawmakers a compromise proposal to retire 72 A-10s in fiscal year 2015 -- a move that would allow the service to shift some Warthog personnel to support the F-35A's 2016 initial operational capability requirement for 1,100 maintainers.