If SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s can adapt his reusable rockets for international passenger travel, his company could soon send people and cargo around the world much faster than can the U.S. Air Force. Musk has realized that the same reusable rockets he is building for missions beyond Earth orbit can also be used to do… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Yesterday was what we’ll call Space Day for the Trump Administration, with perhaps the most national attention ever paid to military and intelligence space in public by the senior officials of a White House and the military. Here’s a summary of the news from the meeting of the reborn Space Council and a later… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: We knew space was congested, contested and all that. But the folks at CSIS have recast that to good effect in a report actually worth reading in detail. The Second Space Age (yes, they’ve come up with a catchy rubric!) is, they say, more diverse, disruptive, disordered, and dangerous than the first space age.” How… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: No other administration would have tried to save money on Lockheed Martin’s F-35, according to President Donald Trump. Now, on its face that may not be so surprising a claim from Trump. But he made it during an appearance at the Luis Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Puerto Rico to show support for the people… Keep reading →

The United States Air Force should consider shifting its balance of its strike forces from fighters to long-range bombers. At the end of the Cold War, the Air Force’s combat aircraft inventory included 411 bombers. Today, it has a total of 158 B-1, B-52, and B-2 bombers, of which only 96 are designated as Primary… Keep reading →

  Plagued by bureaucracy, budget cuts and canceled programs, the US Army is aggressively trying to improve how and what it buys by better collaborating with industry to innovate instead of evolving. A few simple changes to our current methods could have tremendous impacts on our ability to innovate and meet future challenges. A key could… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: It’s always difficult to tell when the military is covering its tuckus and when it’s just being careful. So when the outgoing head of the Air Force press desk, Col. Patrick Ryder, told reporters this afternoon that the service had not made any decision about whether to go ahead with a combat test of… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Is the arsenal of democracy out of business? Probably not, but America’s “increasingly brittle industrial base” may not be able to sustain our forces in a protracted war, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, warned the Senate in a written statement this morning. It’s a problem a lot of people… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the White House had decided not to include aerial refueling as a capability for the next Air Force One fleet. Why? To save money. President Donald Trump has apparently made the decision, reflected by this decision and the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: You’d think Boeing and the Air Force would have learned from Lockheed Martin’s experience with the F-35 and concurrency, which Vice Adm. James Venlet identified six years ago in our pages as a fundamental “miscalculation” in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The issue came to light Friday during a conversation about the KC-46 tanker… Keep reading →