Airforce

AURORA, Colo. — The Air Force’s first two prototype collaborative combat aircraft have received their mission design series designations and will fly this summer, Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin said Monday.
The CCAs, which are being built by Anduril Industries and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., are the first aircraft the Air Force has dubbed fighter drones. General Atomics’ CCA is now known as the YFQ-42A, and Anduril’s is the YFQ-44A, Allvin said in his keynote address at the Air and Space Forces Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium here.
In Air Force nomenclature, fighter aircraft are given an F designation, and Q stands for drones. Prototype aircraft are also given a Y prefix, which these CCAs will drop once they enter production.
“For the first time in our history, we have a fighter designation in the YFQ-42 Alpha and YFQ-44 Alpha,” Allvin said. “It may just be symbolic, but we are telling the world we are leaning into a n..

A first-of-its-kind museum honoring recipients of the nation’s highest combat award is set to open later this month in Arlington, Texas — but the project is already dogged by controversy and outrage amid an apparent snub to one medal recipient.
A petition on behalf of the late Air Force Master Sgt. John Chapman, a combat controller whose fight to the death in thigh-deep snow during the March 4-5, 2002 Battle of Takur Ghar, Afghanistan, is among the first Medal of Honor actions caught on video, has so far gained nearly 25,000 verified signers and tens of thousands of dollars in donations to promote the cause.
The petition, which is hosted on Change.org, calls for the museum, a private enterprise, to create a dedicated exhibit honoring the airman.
Chapman’s sister and other advocates for his family say he was initially promised such an exhibit — and the family was even brought in to discuss it — but that plans were changed amid what appears to be a revival of a dark and long-standing int..

AURORA, Colo. — Lockheed Martin hopes to begin rolling out early Block 4 capabilities to the F-35 this summer, a senior company official said Monday.
Chauncey McIntosh, vice president and general manager of Lockheed’s F-35 program, said at the Air and Space Forces Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium here that the company plans to drop an update to the F-35′s Technology Refresh 3 software, which will enable new features.
The TR-3 software update will bring the aircraft type closer to being able to fly in combat, he said.
“Our warfighters are going to see a much higher increase of stability in that software” once the update is in place, McIntosh said.
TR-3 is a series of upgrades to the F-35′s computer memory, processing power, and displays, which are intended to make the jet more capable and pave the way for a subsequent series of more substantial improvements known as Block 4.
McIntosh said in a briefing with reporters Monday that Block 4 will bring the F-35 imp..

The Air Force under a Trump administration could choose to pursue a more advanced successor to the F-35 instead of the costly Next Generation Air Dominance platform to maintain air superiority, outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday.
Kendall suggested alternative paths for the Air Force’s future combat fleet at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event at the think tank’s Washington headquarters, in which he outlined a report on where the department needs to be in the next 25 years.
Authored by Kendall, the report, titled “The Department of the Air Force in 2050,” amounts to a sort of valedictory in the waning days of his leadership of the department — and a warning of the threats it could face in decades to come.
“The [Air Force and Space Force] missions don’t fundamentally change [by then], but both services need to go through a transformation” by 2050, Kendall said.
The Air Force will need to procure and ma..

PARIS — Denmark repatriated three more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters it had been using for pilot training in the U.S., finalizing a workaround to delivery delays by Lockheed Martin, after the Nordic country already flew home four aircraft in an older configuration in December.
The jets landed at Denmark’s Skrydstrup Air Base on Sunday after a trans-Atlantic flight from Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, with a stopover in the Azores, the Defence Ministry said in a statement Monday. That brings the local F-35 fleet to 11 aircraft, and a major step this year will be for the stealth fighters to partially take over air-policing duties from the country’s aging F-16 jets.
Lockheed Martin deliveries of F-35 jets were delayed last year due to issues with the so-called Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, upgrade. That left Denmark scrambling for options to meet F-35 rollout milestones and expand its locally based fleet beyond four aircraft, eventually prompting a decision in June to fly ..

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he’s tapping Troy Meink, second in command at the National Reconnaissance Office, to be secretary of the Air Force.
Meink began his career as a KC-135 tanker navigator in 1988. He went on to hold a variety of roles across the Air Force’s space enterprise, serving as a chief technical advisor to the Air Force Research Laboratory and later the deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space.
As principal director of the NRO, a position he’s held since 2020, Meink oversees the spy agency’s day-to-day operations. He’s played a key role in discussions around how to collaborate with the Space Force to provide ground target tracking capabilities from space, as well as the NRO’s efforts to leverage space-based commercial imagery services and launch a proliferated satellite constellation.
If confirmed, Meink will lead both the Air Force and the Space Force. His background in space-system acquisition and development could drive more funding..

The Air Force is further delaying the production contract for its newest trainer aircraft, the T-7 Red Hawk, and will expand its testing in a major reorganization of the program’s acquisition strategy.
The service originally planned to award Boeing a contract to build the first production T-7s in fiscal 2025 and would have bought seven jets this year. Under the Air Force and Boeing’s revised plan, the service will now award that contract in 2026, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said in a Wednesday release.
“Acquisition programs cannot be stagnant, even when they are fixed-price,” Hunter said. “This is why I’ve directed the T-7A team to implement updates to reduce risk and increase our confidence in the aircraft design, all to ensure we can deliver the T-7A to the warfighter when needed.”
The Air Force will also buy four additional production-representative test T-7s using 2025 research and development funds that will be delivered in fiscal ..

Among the resumes of President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key Pentagon posts, aspiring Air Force secretary Troy Meink’s stands out.
As a Defense Department insider with deep acquisition and technology-development experience, Meink would bring to the job a government background unlike that of Trump’s other DOD nominees. And his specialization in space could upend the priorities of a service typically dominated by Air Force interests.
Todd Harrison, a senior defense policy fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said choosing a space expert like Meink to lead the Air Force is “consequential” and indicates that space will be a high priority under the Trump administration.
“He is solidly from a space background, unlike any other secretary of the Air Force,” Harrison told Defense News. “I think that it must be intended to send a message that the Trump administration means business when it comes to the Space Force and the prioritizatio..

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A mysterious airstrip being built on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show, one of several built in a nation mired in a stalemated war threatening to reignite.
The airstrip on Abd al-Kuri Island, which rises out of the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling that waterway. That could be useful as commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea — a key route for cargo and energy shipments heading to Europe — has halved under attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The area also has seen weapons smuggling from Iran to the rebels.
The runway is likely built by the United Arab Emirates, which has long been suspected of expanding its military presence in the region and has backed a Saudi-led war against the Houthis.
While the Houthis have linked their campaign to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaz..

MANILA, Philippines — Japan and British defense ministers met last week to discuss an ongoing joint fighter jet development program with Italy and to unveil the trinational headquarters for the project in Reading, 36 miles west of London.
Japan defense minister Gen Nakatani’s U.K. itinerary includes a meeting with Secretary of State for Defense John Healy on the Global Combat Air Programme and a visit to the headquarters of the GCAP International Government Organization (GIGO), the international body tasked with overseeing its development, production, and future exports.
“Today, Minister Nakatani and I have highlighted the positive progress being made on our important next-generation fighter jet program, to strengthen our security cooperation,” Healy was quoted as saying in a press release.
Partners are developing the fighter jets to enter service in 2035 while incurring less costs. The timeframe is crucial for Japan which will start retiring around 100 F-2s in ..