No Light Attack Planes Any Time Soon: Air Force Undersecretary

No Light Attack Planes Any Time Soon: Air Force Undersecretary
No Light Attack Planes Any Time Soon: Air Force Undersecretary

AFA: The Air Force won’t issue a Request For Information on possible Light Attack aircraft, originally scheduled to come out December, in favor of doing a lot more experiments, Air Force Undersecretary Matt Donovan told reporters this morning. The service has been dithering for over a decade about whether to buy propeller-driven aircraft for affordable close…

F-35’s First Combat Strike Won’t End Debate

F-35’s First Combat Strike Won’t End Debate
F-35’s First Combat Strike Won’t End Debate

WASHINGTON: The first-ever real-world strike by an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a big symbolic moment, as the Pentagon is well aware. It’s also a milestone towards making the F-35 a close-support aircraft to bomb targets threatening US ground troops, replacing the beloved A-10 Warthog. That’s why the military not only had a press release…

SecAF: Don’t Expect Large Budget Increases After 2019; $2.4B Set For Light Attack

SecAF: Don’t Expect Large Budget Increases After 2019; $2.4B Set For Light Attack
SecAF: Don’t Expect Large Budget Increases After 2019; $2.4B Set For Light Attack

The Air Force placed a $2.4 billion placeholder in the 2019 budget to buy Light Attack Aircraft over the next five years, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters this morning.

A Wider War: Army Revises Multi-Domain Battle With Air Force Help

A Wider War: Army Revises Multi-Domain Battle With Air Force Help
A Wider War: Army Revises Multi-Domain Battle With Air Force Help

AUSA: How do you coordinate foot soldiers moving four miles per hour with fighter jets moving 1,500 mph?  To address the differences in speed and range, the Army’s Training & Doctrine Command is already revising its new “battlefield framework” – which was first circulated just in July – to open up the Army’s traditional geographic zones…

Reaper Drones: The New Close Air Support Weapon

Reaper Drones: The New Close Air Support Weapon
Reaper Drones: The New Close Air Support Weapon

CORRECTS: Name and title of operations group commander CREECH AIR FORCE BASE: Over two days of briefings here by everyone from pilots to maintainers to the operations group commander of the 432nd Wing, one message rang out loud and clear: the Reaper has grown into a key Close Air Support (CAS) tool for the US military and…

Gen. Pawlikowski Unveils Key Air Force Planning Group: PCA, PEW, OA-X, MDC2!

Gen. Pawlikowski Unveils Key Air Force Planning Group: PCA, PEW, OA-X, MDC2!
Gen. Pawlikowski Unveils Key Air Force Planning Group: PCA, PEW, OA-X, MDC2!

ORLANDO:  A half-dozen people in the Air Force are helping to define the service’s as part of a major new approach to deciding what weapons to buy, known as Strategic Development Planning Experimentation. The effort is led by Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, the commander of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB. The first iteration of SDPE (as…

Drones Do Excellent Urban Close Air Support; Mideast F-35A Deployment In Several Years

Drones Do Excellent Urban Close Air Support; Mideast F-35A Deployment In Several Years
Drones Do Excellent Urban Close Air Support; Mideast F-35A Deployment In Several Years

WASHINGTON: If Congress was skeptical of bombers and fighters doing Close Air Support, how will they react to MQ-9s doing the toughest CAS mission around — taking out targets in the close confines of an urban fight? Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the soon-to-retire head of Air Combat Command, told reporters this morning that the Reaper is…

McCain’s 300 Low-End Fighters A ‘Great Idea:’ CSAF Gen. Goldfein

McCain’s 300 Low-End Fighters A ‘Great Idea:’ CSAF Gen. Goldfein
McCain’s 300 Low-End Fighters A ‘Great Idea:’ CSAF Gen. Goldfein

WASHINGTON: A key part of Sen. John McCain’s alternative defense budget proposal is the rapid purchase of 300 “low-cost, light-attack fighters that would require minimal work to develop.” I asked Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein today what he thought of McCain’s proposal, contained in Restoring American Power. “Great idea,” he said, pointing…

No, Mr. Trump, You Can’t Replace F-35 With A ‘Comparable’ F-18

No, Mr. Trump, You Can’t Replace F-35 With A ‘Comparable’ F-18
No, Mr. Trump, You Can’t Replace F-35 With A ‘Comparable’ F-18

President-Elect Trump’s recent announcement that he is considering acquiring the F/A-18 Super Hornet in place of the F-35 Lightning II does not add up for a leader who seeks “to make America great again.” Too much is at stake for the United States to rely on a fighter aircraft design whose roots extend back to…

F-35A Looks A Lock For IOC OK; CAS As Good As F-16

F-35A Looks A Lock For IOC OK; CAS As Good As F-16
F-35A Looks A Lock For IOC OK; CAS As Good As F-16

WASHINGTON: All the boxes are ticked for the Air Force to declare the F-35A ready for combat. The final clearance hasn’t been given by the man who will decide, Air Combat Command’s Gen. Hawk Carlisle, but he has received all the data on the planes, pilots and maintainers, said Lt. Col. Steven Anderson, 388th Maintenance…

A-10, Then A-11 And A-12? Air Force Ponders CAS Future

A-10, Then A-11 And A-12? Air Force Ponders CAS Future
A-10, Then A-11 And A-12? Air Force Ponders CAS Future

UPDATED: Adds Ayotte Comment WASHINGTON: The Air Force is considering not one, but two replacements for the aging A-10 Warthog close air support plane. But analysts wonder why, given that the service is already building a new bomber (the B-21), a new tanker (the KC-46), a new fighter (the F-35A), they would want to build two Close…

Airstrikes Up In Iraq & Syria, Afghanistan Eats ISR: CENTCOM

Airstrikes Up In Iraq & Syria, Afghanistan Eats ISR: CENTCOM
Airstrikes Up In Iraq & Syria, Afghanistan Eats ISR: CENTCOM

America is waging two very different wars at once. New data from the Defense Department shows the air campaign against the Islamic State escalating back to near-record intensity after a four-month (relative) lull. Meanwhile, airstrikes in Afghanistan are down to a tiny fraction of the bombardment in Iraq and Syria, but Afghanistan’s vast and rugged wastelands…

‘Flying Coke Machine’ Would Replace A-10, If We Had $: Air Force Chief Welsh

‘Flying Coke Machine’ Would Replace A-10, If We Had $: Air Force Chief Welsh
‘Flying Coke Machine’ Would Replace A-10, If We Had $: Air Force Chief Welsh

WASHINGTON: The Air Force wants to replace the aging but beloved A-10 “Warthog” with a robotic “flying coke machine” that loiters over the battlefield, dispensing firepower at the touch of a button, the outgoing Chief of Staff said this morning. (More on that concept below). Gen. Mark Welsh also wants a “sixth-generation fighter” that can…

Robot Brains Where & When You Want ‘Em

Robot Brains Where & When You Want ‘Em
Robot Brains Where & When You Want ‘Em

Classic science fiction imagined evil master computers remote-controlling their mindless robot minions. It imagined good-guy droids that were basically humans in tin suits. But as the actual science of autonomy evolves, reality is looking a lot weirder. The user interface may be in an ordinary Android tablet, but the artificial intelligence itself may reside in…