air force

It's arguably the biggest technology success for the Pentagon during the Iraq War era: the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and reconnaissance missions. But could that very success could prove the undoing of the UAV corps?

The U.S. Army wants more of the aerial drones patrolling the skies, and it has the backing of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has ordered the Air Force to dramatically boost the number of Predator aircraft on the front lines (at the moment, there are 22). The Air Force in turn is pushing back, arguing that the scramble could … Read more

The U.S. Air Force accidentally sent e-mails that were meant to go to its base in Mildenhall, England, to a tourism Web site with a similar address.

Gary Sinnott had created a Web site, Mildenhall.com, in the 1990s to promote his hometown. But not long after that, he reportedly began to be bombarded with e-mails from Air Force members who were trying to contact people on the base, according to the BBC.

Sinnott contacted Air Force officials, who told him not to be concerned about it and assured him they would tell their staff to use the correct … Read more

Boeing officials must be feeling a little bit like the New England Patriots after the aerospace giant on Friday lost out on a $40 billion Air Force deal.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required to view full article), Boeing was considered the favorite to win a $40 billion deal to build midair refueling tankers for the Air Force, but lost out in the end to a consortium made up of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence & Space, parent company of jet maker Airbus.

"Boeing was heavily favored to win the contract," the … Read more

The U.S. Air Force has gone all-in by authorizing full production of the AeroVironment backpack-sized Wasp III micro air vehicle, which will soon to be standard issue for combat controllers and USAF special ops, according to the Pentagon. This follows the U.S. Marine Corps' purchase of a Wasp III system, which it plans to deploy at the platoon level as a complement to the Raven (PDF).

Weighing in at a mere 1 pound, the plane's diminutive 29-inch wingspan can still loft a variety of hefty payloads in addition to its infrared cameras that stream video directly to … Read more

Correction: Spokespeople from SunPower and MMA Renewables said the size of the installation at Nellis Air Force base has been revised to 14.2 megawatts, not 15 megawatts as the Air Force and those companies originally said.

Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the land of lots of sun and plenty of land, will be home to a 70,000 solar-panel installation which, at 14 megawatts, will be the largest in North America.

The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday said Nellis and SunPower have finished the first phase of the project, which will save the base $1 million a … Read more

A next-generation unmanned aerial vehicle piloted from Nevada has fired a weapon in Afghanistan in its first-ever strike on enemy combatants.

The MQ-9 Reaper on Saturday launched a Hellfire missile in a location known as Deh Rawod. The strike, the Air Force reports with great understatement, was successful.

A bigger, more heavily armed follow-on to the Predator UAV, the Reaper has been flying missions in Afghanistan since the last week of September. Until this weekend, however, it had been limited to its secondary role as a tool for surveillance and reconnaissance. With the missile-firing sortie, it has now lived up … Read more

The next U.S. Air Force maverick may be talking to her plane instead of looking at its dash for updates.

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, which the Air Force plans to roll out in 2008, will be the first U.S. fighter to respond to voice commands, the Air Force announced Wednesday.

The Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate has been working on the idea for some time, trying out different systems from a variety of companies.

After years of testing, it now has a speech-recognition system that works from a microphone within a pilot'… Read more

In a sign of great things to come, we've now confirmed our first three Open Source Business Conference keynotes for 2008 (March 25-26, 2008, San Francisco). Given OSBC's increasing emphasis on IT buyers (and not merely vendor strategies), it's appropriate that all three come from successful enterprises:… Read more

TUCSON, Ariz.--I've just finished my tours of the PIMA Air and Space Museum and the Arizona Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) facility here, and boy have I seen a lot of airplanes.

I'm visiting the two facilities as part of my Road Trip 2007 around the Southwest. They are basically side by side, and house approximately 300 and 4,300 planes, respectively.

At the Air and Space museum, it's a mix of military, NASA and civilian planes, including an SR-71, the plane that brought the hostages home from Iran in 1981, plus many others.

At AMARG, … Read more