Military Aviation

No one was injured when a U.S. Air Force A-29 Super Tucano crashed in suburban Georgia earlier this week. Air Force Public Affairs officials said both pilots safely ejected and were released from Clinch Memorial Hospital after evaluation. The single-engine turboprop attack aircraft was operated by the 81st Fighter Squadron at Moody Air Force Base […]

President Donald Trump said Saturday he’d personally negotiated a $1 billion reduction in the $4.2 billion cost of the replacement aircraft for Air Force One and accomplished it in less than an hour. He also told a campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, that the 25 percent discount is “not good enough. We’re still not going […]

Sonic booms rattled the southeast coast of Florida Friday evening as two F-15s were scrambled to intercept an aircraft that violated presidential restricted airspace over West Palm Beach. The fighters had to hit the afterburners to catch up to the unidentified “general aviation aircraft” after taking off from Homestead Air National Guard Base, about 100 […]

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. DeWofl Miller showed little enthusiasm for trading F/A-18 Super Hornets for F-35s, as has been proposed by President Trump in an effort to reduce the total program cost of the F-35 Lightning. Testifying at a House Subcommittee hearing on the F-35 program, Miller said, “The F-35C provides unique capabilities that cannot […]

The next Air Force One should be anything other than a Boeing 747; even Northrop Grumman’s next-generation stealth bomber would be a better choice, says a report by Wright Williams & Kelly (WWK). President Trump has tweeted that he finds the $3.2B projection for the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization program to replace the Air Force’s Boeing […]

Testifying before the House and Senate Armed Services committees this week, leaders of the Air Force and Navy described the billion-dollar economic impact the national pilot shortage is having on their services. Gen. Steven Wilson, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, told congressional leaders, “We can recruit pilots without a problem. The problem […]

While the Air Force and some in Congress muse about a fleet of low-cost light attack aircraft (and seem to prefer mostly foreign-derived designs) there are two American-designed counterterrorism and close air support aircraft in service overseas. Just before he left office, President Barack Obama approved the sale of 12 weaponized Air Tractor AT-802U single-engine […]

Northrop-Grumman will not be submitting a bid for the U.S. Air Force T-X project to replace the T-38 Talon. In a statement released earlier this week, the company said “Northrop Grumman and its principal teammate BAE Systems have carefully examined the U.S. Air Force’s T-X Trainer requirements and acquisition strategy … [and] have decided not […]

U.S. Air Force officials have expressed support for a proposal by Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to acquire several hundred low-cost light-attack and observation aircraft. As proposed by Sen. McCain, “the Air Force should procure 300 low-cost, light-attack fighters that would require minimal work to develop. These aircraft could […]

An Air Force C-17 has become the latest target of a green laser attack. The crew of the big cargo plane reported they were at 4,000 feet over the Jersey Shore on Saturday when the cockpit was illuminated. No one was hurt and the aircraft continued its flight. The laser strike occurred about 9:15 p.m. […]