Military Aviation

Barbara M. Barrett was publicly sworn in as the 25th Secretary of the U.S. Air Force on Saturday. The ceremony took place at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was conducted by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist. Barrett was nominated for the position last May after former Secretary of the […]

The F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin finalized an agreement for the production and delivery of 478 F-35s on Tuesday. The $34 billion contract represents the lowest cost per aircraft in the F-35 program’s notoriously expensive history, with the F-35A unit price dropping an average of 12.8 percent over the three lots (Lots 12-14) […]

The U.S. Air Force’s unmanned X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle successfully completed its fifth mission on Sunday, landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility after 780 days in orbit. The X-37B was launched on Sept. 7, 2017, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, onboard a Space X Falcon 9 booster. The longest the […]

The head of recruitment for the U.S. Air Force says she’s on a mission to improve diversity and boost the ranks of the organization with greater flexibility for those who serve. Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt told an audience at NBAA-BACE 2019 that recruitment services have been put all under one roof so those who want […]

Together the more than 375 V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft in service have logged in excess of 500,000 flight hours, according to maker Bell Boeing. The V-22 was begun in 1983, first flew in 1989, and was finally entered into service with the U.S. Marine Corp in 2007 as the MV-22B. The U.S. Air Force got […]

Textron subsidiary Bell introduced the new Bell 360 Invictus military rotorcraft as its entry for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) Competitive Prototype program this week. The aircraft will feature lift-sharing wings to reduce rotor lift demand in forward flight, a fly-by-wire flight control system, supplemental power unit, and articulated main rotor with […]

At 96, Gen. Chuck Yeager is still ready for a fight and he’s taken on the second biggest aerospace company in the world. Yeager is suing Airbus for allegedly using his name and photo to promote a new helicopter design without paying him. The trademark infringement suit filed last week describes him as “one of […]

Air superiority will be a mainly defensive exercise as the Air Force makes plans for the next generation of fighters. While fifth-generation fighters are just getting comfortable in their roles, the crystal ballers at the Pentagon have started setting the standards for the sixth-generation aircraft that will make them obsolete. “It has to be able […]

The U.S. Navy and Boeing successfully completed the first test flight of the MQ-25 unmanned aerial refueler on Thursday. The test lasted approximately two hours and included an autonomous taxi and takeoff followed by flight along a predetermined route. According to Boeing, the goal of Thursday’s flight was to “validate the aircraft’s basic flight functions […]

The U.S. Air Force’s new T-X trainer has officially been named the T-7A Red Hawk in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen “Red Tails,” the first black aviators to serve in the U.S. military. The announcement was made at the 2019 Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Monday. Col. […]