News

Pentagon announces new batch of drones for Replicator program
The Pentagon unveiled a new round of aerial and maritime drones for Replicator, a massive effort to fast-track the delivery of unmanned weapons systems to the services.

Russia launches missiles against Ukraine’s capital
The attack ended a two-month pause in missile strikes on Kyiv, which had only been hit by Russian drones during that period.

At packed UFO hearing, calls for transparency ring loud
The email came through one day in January 2015, according to Tim Gallaudet, during a pre-deployment exercise off the East Coast that included the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group. The subject line read, in all caps, “URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE,” recalls Gallaudet, then commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command. In his telling, the email from an operations officer asked for any information on a series of unknown objects disrupting the exercise. Attached was a now declassified video of what the Navy would later confirm were unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs.

 

Air Force

USAF’s new force design, still a secret, will be ‘fiscally informed’
As the Air Force completes a highly anticipated force design—its first real overhaul in a generation—the leaders overseeing the work drew a narrow distinction over how the resulting future force will be funded.

The Air Force’s biggest supporter gets a spotlight from Gary Sinise in ‘The Real American’
There aren’t a lot of folk legends in America anymore, but pilots at Nellis Air Force Base who flew missions for the past four decades can name at least one: the man in overalls who would come running out of his house to wave an American flag as they flew by — a man who never failed to make this grand gesture.

Air Force to retire A-10 attack jets from South Korea, modernize F-16s
The Air Force is retiring A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from South Korea and upgrading its F-16 Fighting Falcons there as part of a “modernization effort” across the service, according to a news release Tuesday.

USAF will withdraw A-10s from final overseas base in Korea in 2025
The U.S. Air Force will start withdrawing its A-10 aircraft from Osan Air Base, South Korea, the Thunderbolt II’s last overseas location, starting in January.

Air Force ordering more robot wingmen for its experimentation unit
The Air Force is buying more drones for its collaborative combat aircraft experimentation unit in Nevada to test out how the service will use these robot wingmen in a potential fight.

‘The United States needs more Air Force’: Allvin makes the case for more funding
The Air Force’s top officer made a blunt case Nov. 13 for the service to get more funding so the nation can employ more effective airpower—and offered a preview of a coming force design to go with that funding.

 

Space Force

Trump’s second term could push Space Force to take bolder stance
As Donald Trump embarks on his second term, all eyes are on the future of the U.S. Space Force. Created during Trump’s first term, the Space Force has become a focal point of national security strategy, with its mission aimed at countering rising space threats from China and Russia.

 

Defense

Boeing layoffs likely to impact military support programs
Boeing employees will learn Wednesday who will lose their jobs in mid-January in the round of layoffs Boeing announced last month. The cuts will be broadly spread across the company and, despite some expectations earlier, engineers and production workers won’t be exempt.

Air Force wraps up critical design review for Increment 1 of CCA drones
Anduril and General Atomics have completed Critical Design Reviews (CDR) of their respective plans for Increment 1 of the Air Force’s collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) program, a service official announced Wednesday.

 

Veterans

Lapse in computer security at Atlanta VA leaves millions of veterans’ records unprotected, report finds
A Department of Veterans Affairs office in Atlanta that determines health care coverage for veterans failed to encrypt the records of more than 3 million former service members, ran outdated computer programs not securely configured and permitted unauthorized software on its networks, according to an audit.