Russia casts a long shadow nowadays, especially if you’re a neighbor. Armed with heavy tanks, jet fighters, long-range missiles, and the world’s slickest state-sponsored cyber-criminals, Russia is a very different threat from the so-called Islamic State, the Taliban, or even China. So how must the US and its NATO allies change gears, mindset and tactics to cope?… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The grander the title, the blander the content. That’s normally a safe rule in Washington. But if analyzed closely, this afternoon’s “State of the Air Force” briefing by service Secretary Deborah Lee James and Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, plus the accompanying pamphlet A Call To the Future, actually do articulate a remarkably clear… Keep reading →

[UPDATED with Air Force release] This afternoon, the Air Force released a new strategy for “Strategic Agility,” the culmination of months of research to create an overarching framework to forecast the capabilities the US Air Force must have for the next 30 years. The Air Force’s strategy and the term itself was inspired by a 2013… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “I believe, today, we could build a Mach 5 cruise missile [with] off-the-shelf materials,” said Charles Brink of the Air Force Research Laboratory. “We could go 500 nautical miles in 10 minutes.” Brink should know: He ran AFRL’s record-breaking X-51 program. Now AFRL and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are co-funding a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The A-10 Warthog is ugly, tough, lethal, and fairly flexible. Its famous 30mm gun can destroy tanks or other armored vehicles with remarkable efficiency, not to mention enemy troops. Its titanium tub of a cockpit protects the plane’s pilot from most ground fire. Its pilots are trained to fly low and slow and to… Keep reading →

Technology is not enough. What’s equally essential is ideas for how to use it. Wielding new weapons in the same old way is a recipe for defeat. As the US military today invests in innovative programs, none larger than the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, it must also invent innovative concepts of operation. The Air Force’s… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: We aren’t quite finished developing and producing our fifth generation aircraft, the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, but their time is already running out, the head of Air Combat Command said today. And work has not really begun on a sixth generation aircraft. Gen. Mike Hostage, the ACC commander, told an audience of more… Keep reading →

[Corrected 9:35 pm with a note about the EC-130 Compass Call] Is stealth still America’s silver bullet? Or are potential adversaries’ radars getting too smart for US aircraft to keep hiding from them? That’s literally the trillion-dollar question, because the US military is investing massively in new stealth aircraft. At stake in this debate are… Keep reading →