Aviation Week dropped a heck of a story yesterday when it revealed the Air Force’s newest X-plane, the X-56A. The the flying wing is being designed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks to test out the technologies that will allow a new crop of reconnaissance planes to stay aloft at high altitudes for long periods of times; think days or weeks. […]
Air Force
The Air Force is paying Northrop Grumman $47 million to equip two more Block 20 RQ-4 Global Hawks with BACN. You know, the communications link that allows different types of datalinks to communicate with one another; allowing troops on the ground to easily share info with pilots in jets overhead even if they’re out of […]
Yup, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) needs to be harder, according to anonymous Pentagon sources cited in a Wall Street Journal article. A series of recent tests found that the Air Force’s 30,000-pound tool for penetrating 32 stories of reinforced concrete might not have enough penetrating power to take out Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear […]
Imagine flying, along with 20 or so fellow aircrew, in an Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System (JSTARS) jet for a mission to track down insurgents planting roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. You’ve just taken off from your base in Qatar but before you can go scan the ground for […]
Here’s where you’ll see the weapons programs are going to thrive going forward and the types that won’t (barring Capitol Hill getting involved, which you’ve always got to factor in). Below you’ll the Pentagon’s basic budget documents that the DoD has released to coincide with the budget rollout that we’ve been live Tweeting. The first […]
