This might be the year when the first special operations armed overwatch aircraft actually fly. During a virtual event at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Lieutenant General James Slife, the commander of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), stated that the long-awaited Armed Overwatch Program will probably see its first demonstration flights this year. […]
The U.S. Air Force has successfully tested a new loadout for the F-15E Strike Eagle that allows the highly capable multirole fighter to carry a whopping 15 JDAMs at once, though it won’t be able to leverage them all in a single sortie. Entering service more than a decade after the F-15 Eagle it’s based on, the […]
Three Airmen received the Bronze Star for their actions in curbing a COVID-19 outbreak in the NATO headquarters in Afghanistan. During a deployment in Afghanistan last year, the three Air Force troops (two doctors and a medic) were key in first stalling and then stopping the outbreak. The three recipients are Captain Kathleen Schurr, […]
The U.S. Air Force is thinking about starting from scratch on a new, lightweight fighter that could ease the financial burden brought on by the troubled but capable F-35. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may be the Air Force’s “quarterback in the sky,” but it’s also expensive to operate and, to date, still riddled with […]
On Tuesday, the first-ever F-15EX took to the skies in a test flight that brought the U.S. Air Force that much closer to fielding what may be the most capable 4th generation fighter on the planet. The F-15 has been in service for more than 45 years to date, and is widely regarded as the […]
America’s Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, sometimes referred to as the BUFF, has been around for a long time. As one of America’s three heavy-payload strategic bombers and one of only two bombers capable of deploying nuclear weapons, the mighty BUFF represents the nation’s nuclear triad’s most prominent airborne leg. If the world were going to end […]
Army Lieutenant General Bryan P. Fenton will be replacing Air Force Lieutenant General Scott Howell.
Recently, a team from the Air Force’s 23rd Special Tactics Squadron deployed to Central America in response to a humanitarian crisis, the result of two devastating hurricanes. In November, Hurricanes Eta and Iota rampaged through nine countries in Central and South America, causing severe flooding and landslides and affecting tens of millions of people. In Guatemala, […]
This is Callie, the only search and rescue dog in the entire U.S. military. Callie and her handler, Master Sergeant Rudy Parsons, are assigned to the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron, Kentucky Air National Guard. Callie was “born” out of experience. In 2010, a catastrophic earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The impoverished country’s infrastructure doubled […]
Being able to fly by the seat of your pants is still an important skill for a fighter pilot. Although modern fighters have an incredible array of sensors that feed them real-time information out to the horizon, a good pilot still listens to how the aircraft is talking to them. When aircraft were introduced in […]
The first time you select afterburner in a fighter is an experience you’ll never forget. Over a decade later, I can still remember every second of it. I had made it through the attrition of pilot training and was now in the 9-month B-Course learning to fly the F-16. After several months of academics—going over every system […]
Last Friday, the U.S. Air Force’s 354th Fighter Wing and the 168th Wing of the Air National Guard conducting a massive display of airpower, commonly referred to as an “elephant walk,” by scrambling more than 30 fighters and two refueling aircraft in just a matter of minutes from the airstrips on Eielson Air Force Base […]
Earlier this month, the Kratos Defense XQ-58A Valkyrie flew alongside each of America’s 5th generation fighters for the first time, as the U.S. Air Force attempted to test a secure data link that would have connected the three aircraft in flight. This first test of a technology system dubbed “gatewayONE,” successfully connected the F-22 Raptor […]
As a fighter pilot, one of the most common questions I get is: How do you go to the bathroom in an F-16 or F-35? Let me start off by describing the cockpit. A cockpit in a modern fighter is an engineering masterpiece. An incredible amount of effort goes into allowing us to interface with the aircraft. […]
An American veteran F-22 pilot just took on a virtual representation of China’s Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter from the seat of a very real aircraft in flight. The Chinese fighter was projected on the pilot’s augmented reality helmet-mounted display, giving a real pilot in a real aircraft the opportunity to train against a seemingly real […]
There’s no other jet I’d want to go into combat in than the F-35A, the Air Force’s newest supersonic stealth fighter. As a fighter pilot who’s flown several variants of the legendary F-16 as well as the F-35, I can say that, between the two aircraft, it’s not even a close competition. Comparing the two […]
The B-1B Lancer has long served as America’s only supersonic heavy payload bomber, but for a time, Boeing considered extending its life as a high-speed gunship that would combine the firepower of the Spooky AC-130 gunship with the speed and maneuverability of an oversized fighter. The Rockwell B-1B Lancer is a viable sweep-wing bomber straight […]
Over the past two decades of counter-terror combat operations the world over, few platforms have come to serve as unofficial symbols of American military might quite like the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle and the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. Most of us, however, know them as the Humvee and the Warthog. You’ll be hard-pressed to […]
Aerial refueling is one of the more dangerous tasks fighter pilots need to master. Throughout pilot training, you’re taught the biggest mistake you can make is to hit something with your aircraft—which is why the first time you refuel in the air, it can be nerve-racking. The concept is to join up with a tanker—essentially […]
Colonel Allison Black, a female Airman, made history earlier in the summer by becoming the vice commander of the 24th Special Operations Wing. She is one of the few female Airmen to command at that level in the history of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). And yet this is not Col. Black’s first. Earlier in […]
September 18th marks the 73rd birthday of the Air Force, and with it, decades worth of interesting and innovative history. Here are six cool facts I learned while diving deeper into the history of the Air Force (spoiler: Santa and Chuck Norris are in good company). Faster than the speed of sound West Virginia born […]
Three Silver Stars were earned during a hard fight in Afghanistan last year. Two Army Special Forces soldiers and one Air Force Pararescueman received the nation’s third-highest award for extreme valor while under fire in Afghanistan. The 7th Special Forces Group team fought against what Army officials described as an elite Taliban unit, which they encountered by accident […]
When I deployed to Afghanistan, a single care package full of Chick-fil-A sauce increased the morale of the squadron for weeks. I deployed as an F-16 pilot to Bagram Air Base, just north of Kabul—it’s a massive base that at night can be seen from over 100 miles away. The sprawling city is home to thousands of […]
DARPA’s AlphaDogfight trials have officially come to a close with Heron Systems’ incredible artificial intelligence pilot system defeating not only its industry competitors, but going on to secure 5 straight victories against a highly trained U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot, without the human pilot scoring a single hit. Eight teams were selected to create artificial […]
On Thursday, aerospace company Hermeus announced that they had secured an Air Force contract to develop a hypersonic version of the President’s plane, known within the Air Force and beyond as Air Force One. Hypersonic is a term used to describe aircraft that can travel at sustained speed in excess of Mach 5, or slightly higher than 3,836 miles per […]
