Though not finished with formal testing, two new Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites have been used for operations, says Air Force Gen. John Hyten, who oversees Air Force Space Command.
Experts want further research to prevent contamination of the red planet’s little-understood “Special Regions” — areas potentially warm and wet enough for Earthly microbes to proliferate.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will maintain the lead in air superiority over all comers for the next 20 to 30 years despite aggressive efforts emerging from new fighter technology in China, Russia and elsewhere, program officials claim.
The U.S. Air Force’s top special operations officer says he hopes to outfit his gunship fleet with new UAV sensors and high-energy lasers in the future.
The Kongsberg-developed Joint Strike Missile (JSM), designed for internal carriage in Lockheed Martin’s F-35, has completed captive carriage testing in the U.S. and will be air dropped for the first time in October from an F-16.
An American pilot said a Chinese aircraft intercepted his U.S. intelligence-gathering RC-135 in an “unsafe” manner earlier this month, the Pentagon says, in a scenario reminiscent of previous recent incidents of aerial harassment.
Developers hope to ground test a turbine engine at Mach 3.2 in the coming months, paving the way for long-range supersonic cruise missiles as well as potentially laying the foundation for a viable combined-cycle hypersonic propulsion system.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 5 Milwaukee successfully concluded its acceptance trial earlier this month after completing a series of in-port and underway demonstrations for the U.S. Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (Insurv), service officials say.
The Navy has identified a “slight deterioration in the required progress” on the CVN 78 shipboard test program,” Cmdr. Thurraya Kent says. “As a result, the sea trial schedule will be delayed about six to eight weeks.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) will begin using new solid rocket boosters developed by Orbital ATK as early as 2018, in a shift away from Aerojet Rocketdyne as a booster-supplier for its Atlas V and planned Vulcan launch vehicles.
The global space economy generated $330 billion in 2014, a 9% surge over the previous year and the biggest leap since 2011, according to the U.S. Space Foundation’s The Space Report.
Leaked details of a Norwegian defense planning document intended to guide government spending in 2016 appear to support continued procurement of the planned full complement of Lockheed Martin F-35s,
Leaked details from a Norwegian defense planning document appear to support continued procurement of the planned full complement of Lockheed Martin F-35s.
After a delay of more than three years, India has approved the purchase of 22 AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters and 15 Chinook CH-47F heavy-lift helicopters from the U.S. for the country’s air force.
In a U.S. Navy field test, Northrop Grumman’s AQS-24B mine-hunting system successfully demonstrated the ability to perform synthetic aperture sonar processing at 18 kt. in real time, the company says.
The U.S. Navy successfully fired a Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) from a SeaRAM launcher for the first time on an Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ship.
