Wednesday, April 17, 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.
Senate defense authorizers this week laid out pieces of a plan to speed development of a next-generation battle management network to replace the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, to include legacy command-and-control aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft and a new target-tracking radar.
House appropriators want to block the Air Force from retiring more than one E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System jet unless the service continues its earlier plan to recapitalize the fleet.
Robins Air Force Base, GA, will build a blue-suit heavy maintenance enterprise for the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, the second major intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to try a new sustainment approach there in as many years.
The Air Force is putting the finishing touches on its fiscal year 2020 program objective memorandum, but the key budgeting document is "blind" to agile development, the Air Force's director of information technology acquisition process development said this week.
Two Democratic senators added language to the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the fiscal year 2019 defense policy bill that would tell the Government Accountability Office to report on how the Air Force is improving the lives of its remotely piloted aircraft operators.
The Air Force Research Laboratory on May 29 requested proposals to launch a "state-of-the-art, end-to-end, sustainable collaborative research consortium" for aerospace autonomy, which would receive $195 million through fiscal year 2022.
L3 Technologies and BAE Systems have stopped work on the Air Force's EC-130H Compass Call "cross-deck" program until the service can again obligate funds in two weeks, an Air Force spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.
The Pentagon's independent cost estimate office projects the Air Force's Combat Rescue Helicopter will cost up to $9.2 billion, 3 percent more than the service's cost position of $8.9 billion, according to a recent Defense Department report on the military's 30-year aviation outlook.
The Air Force wants to make headway on developing an autonomous fighter jet in an 18-month program spearheaded by a new rapid development team, Inside Defense has learned.
The Air Force is delaying its contract award for the UH-1N Huey replacement program until the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2018, after previously planning to select a new helicopter by early summer.
A new directed-energy program aims to outfit a yet-undetermined air vehicle with a laser that can protect airborne platforms and defend bases, an Air Force spokesman tells Inside Defense.
A new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program hopes to develop tools to ensure autonomous systems act properly as they evolve with machine learning, and will work with Boeing and Northrop Grumman testbeds to vet those assured autonomy techniques.
The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center says it resolved risks to the B61-12 life extension program's tailkit assembly effort that were noted in a recent Selected Acquisition Report obtained by Inside the Air Force.
Air Force Air Education and Training Command is gathering data that will shape whether and how the service allows enlisted airmen to fly MQ-9 Reapers, the command's top general told reporters this week.
The Air Force confirmed this week it will ask Congress to reprogram an additional $183 million for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent this year, hoping the intercontinental ballistic missile modernization program would remain ahead of schedule.
The Pentagon's annual assessment of the defense industrial base shares concerns with Capitol Hill about the future of solid-rocket motors, including the potential for competition and continued research and development in the face of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program.
The Government Accountability Office this week denied parts of Sikorsky's challenge to how the Air Force handles data rights in the UH-1N Huey replacement program, and dismissed other points because they were raised too early or late in the competition.
Boeing will receive a contract worth up to $250 million to study how to make the Long-Range Standoff Weapon safe to fly on the B-52 bomber.
Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord certified the Air Force's acquisition strategy for the Compass Call recapitalization program in a May 14 memo to Congress, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed Friday.
The Air Force has no concrete plans to expand an independent nuclear threat assessment group tapped for additional investment following the latest Nuclear Posture Review, but increased funding could arrive as early as fiscal year 2019, according to a service spokeswoman.