WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is taking a year off from buying the MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopter due to ongoing delays in getting the platform certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, service officials said Friday.
“Basically what we are doing is we are deferring the procurement of the MH-139 until [fiscal 2023]. It’s not in the budget in FY22 due to an FAA certification issue…
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force’s $4.2 billion wish list for fiscal 2022 includes about $1.4 billion to buy 12 more F-15EX fighters from Boeing, helping to narrow a projected gap as the service divests its aging F-15C/D fleet.
More funding for the F-15EX — which…
WARSAW, Poland — Croatia’s government has made a decision to buy 12 second-hand Rafale F3-R fighter jets from France for the country’s Air Force, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said.
“The purchase of the multirole fighter aircraft will strengthen…
STUTTGART, Germany — Two major French technology companies are joining forces in an effort to become the European nation’s premier institution for artificial intelligence and big-data efforts.
Thales and Atos announced Thursday the creation of a joint venture called Athea, along with plans to develop a flagship, sovereign, big-data and AI platform that could serve customers in the public…
WASHINGTON — A new report from the Pentagon’s inspector general asserts there were years of accumulating signs that should have prompted the Air Force to take a closer look at the KC-46′s refueling boom, on which the service is now spending $100 million to redesign.
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WASHINGTON — A battle is brewing over the fate of the MQ-9 Reaper, with a letter from the U.S. Air Force’s top civilian signaling that the service will again seek to curtail procurement of the General Atomics-made drone in the upcoming fiscal 2022 budget.
“Our…
WASHINGTON — The F-35 joint strike fighter loomed like a ghost over the May 25 confirmation hearing of President Joe Biden’s pick for Air Force secretary, who famously called the program a case of “acquisition malpractice.”
If confirmed, Frank Kendall — who oversaw the program during the Obama administration as the Defense Department’s acquisition executive — will become the Air…
U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville recently earned headlines for admitting the service’s 2022 budget challenges will cap personnel at roughly 485,000. His assessment heralds hard modernization decisions servicewide, but the metastasizing threats to U.S. air and…
ROME — Directed-energy beams could be the next step in bringing down hostile drones, officials from the Italian Air Force are predicting.
“This technology is moving really fast and we are evaluating both microwave and lasers as solutions for stopping drones,” said…
WASHINGTON — By the end of this fiscal year, one company could rake in a contract worth up to $490 million to provide the U.S. Air Force with technologies to counter the threat of small, commercially made drones.
On April 13, the Air Force released a request for proposals for the “rapid research, development, prototyping, demonstration, evaluation, and transition” of technologies that can…
