Michael Marrow covers air warfare for Breaking Defense. He holds a BA in history from the University of Virginia and started out as a freelance reporter covering local news in Fairfax County, Virginia and policing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Michael previously reported on the Air Force and Space Force for Inside Defense, where he tracked major acquisitions, policy changes and modernization efforts.
An Air Force press release said that the missile was launched in a second all-up-round test and met “several objectives,” but conspicuously left out claims of overall success.
The Department of the Air Force Battle Network represents “the physical architecture, the product architecture, that’s needed” to realize JADC2 capabilities, Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the integrating program executive officer for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management, said in an interview with Breaking Defense.
A new report by the Mitchell Institute argues that the Air Force should procure 225 or more of the next-gen stealth bombers to effectively deter adversaries and shore up more cost-effective long-range strike capabilities.
Seeking to pivot to a new generation of air power by fielding platforms like the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter, the Air Force is planning significant investments into future technologies, according to service budget documents, which also show that fiscal 2024 could be a turning point for hypersonics.
Air Force’s Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) program has funded prototyping work with three short-term contracts first issued last year to Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and Northrop Grumman.
Asked whether the Air Force would be willing to try again on pursuing an adaptive engine if Congress provided more funding, service Secretary Frank Kendall said, “No, we’ve made our decision.”
The service is seeking the funds to “validate” modern tactics against a realistic peer adversary. Officials still “have a lot of studies to do to make sure we’re building the right kind of ranges and the right kind of simulators, and we’re learning as we go a little bit,” said CSO Gen. Chance Saltzman.
Deliveries of the jet were halted after the crash of an F-35B in December. Even as a root cause has yet to be identified, the F-35 Joint Program Office said acceptances resumed after implementing mitigation efforts for one identified engine issue.
Building off trends established by the fiscal 2023 budget, the service is asking for even more retirements in FY24 while seeking to launch new efforts like a program to field autonomous wingmen. “We’ve built a budget that we think has a reasonable balance between current-, midterm- and longer-term investments, if you will, or capabilities,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that if the development cost was lower, the Air Force may have found the space in its budget to fund the engine for its jets alone, “but at the level of several billion dollars to do that [engineering and manufacturing development], we couldn’t get there.”
The Air Force has been asking Congress for permission to mothball the aircraft for years, which lawmakers approved in fiscal 2023. The FY24 budget is likely to ask for more retirements.
The drones will provide an “affordable mass” to augment the lethality of fighters. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says they need to be a “fraction” of the cost of the F-35.
Service acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said the initial tranche of collaborative combat aircraft wingmen are “very much within grasp,” with capability expected to be delivered by the end of the decade.
Highly adept Ukrainian and Russian air defenses have mutually denied air superiority, a problem particularly acute for close air support missions. “Both of their integrated air and missile defense, especially when you’re talking about going against aircraft, have been very effective,” Gen. James Hecker said.
