Sunday, November 16, 2025
After finally getting the go-ahead in the fiscal year 2024 budget to kick-off several key Air Force projects as part of its Seven Operational Imperatives, a proposed six-month temporary spending bill for FY-25 is again threatening to delay the service's swift modernization and readiness plans, according to a new letter Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has sent to Capitol Hill leadership.
As autonomy and other innovative technology emerge rapidly out of research and development and into the field, the Air Force is changing the way it thinks about acquisition to center systems over platforms, forcing industry to also pivot how it presents products.
The Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft has been championed by Pentagon personnel and some lawmakers for its speed-to ramp acquisition model to fill capability gaps and ability to bring an affordable mass to the warfighter, but not every aspect of the program will be purchased the same way, the service's acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said today.
The Air Force has taken on millions in losses because personnel lack training to adequately identify defective parts or correctly seek restitution from contractors, according to a recent report from the Pentagon’s inspector general.
The Defense Department is withholding about $5 million for each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter delivered with a truncated version of the Technology Refresh-3 software upgrade, a spokesperson with the F-35 Joint Program Office told Inside Defense.
The Air Force last week signed a record of decision to replace all of the T-38C Talons at Columbus Air Force Base, MS with up to 77 T-7A Red Hawk jets, keeping the flight training program there, according to a Federal Register notice issued this week.
Joby Aviation and Reliable Robotics performed several autonomous logistics missions during the Air Force's Agile Flag 24-3 exercise earlier this month, demonstrating the kind of flexibility and extended range the service has said is needed to be successful in a fight in the Indo-Pacific, according to an Air Force news release.
The prospect of facing another series of continuing resolutions that would hold back implementation of the fiscal year 2025 defense budget is already piquing concern from the Air Force's top officer.
The Air Force's new Integrated Capabilities Command may take the longest and be the most difficult to execute out of each of the service's recently announced organizational changes, a top service official said today.
The Air Force's plan to test its new organizational structure in a large-scale, multicombatant command exercise in the Indo-Pacific next summer now has a name: REFORPAC.
Archer Aviation has delivered its first Midnight mobility platform to the Air Force for evaluation as part of the company's up to $142 million contract with AFWERX agility prime, according to a notice issued today.
The F-35 Joint Program Office will not pursue a performance-based logistics contract with Lockheed Martin next year, but "the [Defense] Department will continue to assess and seek to award the best contracting strategy for F-35 sustainment, to include PBL type arrangements where advantageous," according to a defense official.
The Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft will not only pair with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, but also the F-15EX Eagle II, F-22 Raptor and platforms from other services or allies, according to a top Air Force official.
Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics will come together to develop and produce solid-rocket motors in a bid to improve the nation's crippling domestic supply chain for the energetics systems that power most of the Pentagon's munitions, according to an announcement issued today.
The Air Force is planning to approve low-rate initial production for its T-7 Red Hawk trainers on an incremental basis as it deals with long-term developmental delays, according to Kevin Stamey, the Air Force's program executive officer for mobility and training aircraft.
The Air Force's weapon systems and subsystems will now go through HII-run depots for some repair or maintenance work, according to an announcement the company issued today.
Unmanned fighter jets could be fielded "way" before the end of the decade, or the Air Force's planned timeline for operating Collaborative Combat Aircraft, Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of ShieldAI, told Inside Defense.
The Air Force is setting its sights on modernized counter small unmanned aircraft systems fitted with modular machine learning algorithms, the latest command and control technology and more capable sensors and effectors, according to a recent request for information.
The Senate Appropriations Committee wants to bulk up the Air Force's fleet by giving the service an additional $3.4 billion to make about 500 more aircraft available as lawmakers and the Pentagon weigh priorities to deter Russia and China, according to a report accompanying Senate appropriators' version of next year's defense spending bill.
Boeing on Friday delivered the first production MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopter to the Air Force, months after the program's per-unit costs grew enough to breach Nunn-McCurdy law, according to a company news release issued today.