Air Force

An influential Pentagon advisory board is recommending the United States be "more aggressive" with adversaries like China and Russia in non-military "Gray Zone" conflicts that require new capabilities, especially in the cyber realm.

The Air Force is refining its acquisition strategy for the Stand-in Attack Weapon -- an emerging guided missile intended for the F-35 fighter jet -- to place greater emphasis on digital engineering and open-systems architecture.

The F-22 program office estimates it incurred about $90 million in cost growth following an 11-month schedule slip to the first release of the program’s capability pipeline modernization effort.

The Air National Guard's MQ-9 enterprise has been quietly fighting under the radar to show the remotely piloted aircraft has utility in future operations by transforming its hunter-killer counterinsurgency capabilities to better enable joint all-domain command and control under a little-known initiative called the "Ghost Reaper," multiple sources tell Inside Defense.

The Air National Guard's MQ-9 enterprise has been quietly fighting under the radar to show the remotely piloted aircraft has utility in future operations by transforming its hunter-killer counterinsurgency capabilities to better enable joint all-domain command and control under a little-known initiative called the "Ghost Reaper," multiple sources tell Inside Defense.

The Air Force is eyeing an investment of about $100 million in its vanguard programs -- which strive to accelerate transformational capabilities to the battlefield -- in fiscal year 2024 to meet the demands of the service's 2030 Science and Technology Strategy.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown told reporters today congressional proposals to set minimum aircraft inventory requirements put constraints on the service's ability to make necessary force structure changes to meet the requirements of the National Defense Strategy.

As the Space Force prepares for the likelihood of a continuing resolution, the service chief Gen. John Raymond said this week he's concerned about programmatic impacts, operations and maintenance shortfalls and the transfer of space accounts from the Air Force to the Space Force.

The new head of Air Mobility Command said today that while she has seen progress in Boeing's proposed interim KC-46 Remote Vision System upgrade package, she needs more testing data and assurance that the near-term value the capability could bring to the warfighter outweighs the time it would take to upgrade existing tankers.