Friday, April 19, 2024
Rachel Cohen was managing editor for Inside the Air Force until January 2019. She previously covered the public health insurance marketplaces for Inside Health Policy and primary, secondary and higher education at the Frederick News-Post in Frederick County, Maryland. She graduated from American University in 2013 with a bachelor's degree in international studies and journalism.
Air National Guard pilots need three more Sikorsky HH-60G search-and-rescue helicopters to meet their combat and homeland-security mission requirements, the Air Force said in a June report to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The Air Force needs to reorganize its Lockheed Martin F-22 enterprise and increase pilot training to properly address high-end threats, the Government Accountability Office says in a report published Thursday.
Defense Department officials are asking Congress to let the Air Force shift more than $536 million of its base-budget funds to higher priorities in fiscal year 2018, largely for research and development efforts, according to an omnibus reprogramming request signed by the Pentagon comptroller July 11.
The Air Force this week awarded Boeing a $3.9 billion firm, fixed-price contract to formally launch the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization program's engineering and manufacturing development phase, which was hailed as a win by the White House after months of hashing out a cost estimate.
The Air Force will delay the contract award in the UH-1N Huey replacement program for at least a year if Congress doesn't authorize an $83.4 million infusion to keep the effort on track, according to a copy of the Defense Department's June omnibus reprogramming request obtained by Inside Defense this week.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently named U.S. Strategic Command chief Gen. John Hyten the sole person responsible for overseeing nuclear command, control and communications, Hyten said at a July 13 Mitchell Institute conference. (UPDATED)
Boeing and the Air Force wrapped up a slate of KC-46 tanker flight tests July 6, clearing another hurdle ahead of the first aircraft's planned delivery in late October.
A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency effort aimed at achieving seamless multidomain operations demonstrated its capabilities in a series of flight tests with Lockheed Martin over the past year, the company said this week.
Air Force operators will now receive the first EC-37B Compass Call in 2023, not 2022 as the service expected earlier this year, a BAE Systems spokesman said this week.
Some Air Force units are latching onto an experiment run by Air Education and Training Command aimed at tailoring and accelerating the pilot-education process, as squadrons start to adapt the software and hardware to their own needs.
The Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute this week proposed the service consider pulling Lockheed Martin F-16 jets from the boneyard to repurpose them as autonomous aircraft that can fight in tandem with other platforms like the B-21 and F-35, arguing fleets of autonomous aircraft are a cost-effective way to bolster combat capacity.
The Air Force last week revealed plans to buy about 100 MQ-9 Reapers in the next five fiscal years, nearly double the number it projected in budget documents published earlier this year.
The Air Force's secretive Common Mission Control Center -- viewed as a key piece of the service's multidomain command-and-control push -- is on track to reach early operational capability next year and initial operational capability in 2020, a service official tells Inside Defense.
Nebraska's congressional delegation is pressing Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson for more information on the safety of certain aircraft in the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, NE, following an investigation by the Omaha World-Herald.
A new acquisition strategy and baseline for the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System Block 40/45 upgrade program will be completed later this summer, an Air Force spokesman recently told Inside Defense.
The Defense Department's inspector general last month launched an audit of the Air Force's B61-12 tailkit assembly program to check whether it is meeting its cost, schedule and performance requirements, the watchdog office announced this week.
Lawmakers disagree over how strongly they should push the Air Force to buy light-attack aircraft in fiscal year 2019, as the appropriations and authorization committees vary widely on how much money to offer the service for a new fleet.
A team analyzing the future of the MQ-9 Reaper will present its final results to the Air Force Capability Development Working Group in July, a service spokeswoman told Inside Defense this week.
U.S. Special Operations Command is refining development plans for its AC-130J Ghostrider laser demonstration and expects to award two subsystem manufacturing contracts by the end of September, a command official told Inside Defense.
The Air Force's light-attack experiment is suspended until further notice as service officials determine whether they gleaned enough data from flight tests to end the effort early, following a fatal A-29 crash last week at White Sands Missile Range, NM.