Vanessa Montalbano

Prototyping for the Air Force's new bunker-buster bomb has been extended by one year, according to the service's fiscal year 2027 budget request. The GBU-76 Next Generation Penetrator program will not complete prototype demonstration through modeling and simulation, design, product development and test until the end of FY-28, according to next year’s research, development, test and evaluation spending proposal. The service in its FY-26 budget request projected that prototype activities would be complete by the end of FY-27...

The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to adopt language proposed by the Air Force that changes the way the service legally accounts for all of its battle-ready fighter jets, according to the report accompanying Senate authorizers'version of the fiscal year 2027 defense policy bill. Under the new definition, the number of aircraft considered mission ready on a moment's notice would expand. At the same time, lawmakers are calling to increase the fighter floor threshold to 1,369 aircraft by...

The Air Force has selected both Anduril Industries and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to produce their airframe designs for the first three lots of the emerging Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, the service announced today. “We always envisioned to have the flexibility to take up to two types of vendors” into production, Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Col. Timothy Helfrich told reporters today. “A big reason for that is that we believe that continuous competition drives the best...

The Air Force wants to bring together a host of financiers, small businesses, non-traditional defense contractors and an administrative team to manage public-private projects directed at increasing energy resilience at service installations, according to a draft solicitation released today. The group, called the Consortium Management Organization (CMO), would eventually establish and monitor a Defense Energy Consortium (DECo) aimed at closing power gaps across the service. “Members of the consortium will be responsible for fully financing potential projects using private...

The Qatari-government-donated "VC-25B Bridge” jet is now in the hands of the Presidential Airlift Group at Joint Base Andrews, MD, and is on track to begin flying, the service announced on Friday.

The Air Force would not be permitted to terminate its innovation division -- AFWERX -- under the House Appropriations defense subcommittee's version of the fiscal year 2027 defense spending bill. Appropriators would provide AFWERX with about $61 million next year for research, development, evaluation and test to continue operations. The service requested just $3.6 million in FY-27 “to close out activities and prepare for termination of AFWERX,” according to a report accompanying the panel’s version of the FY-27 defense spending...

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is adapting its Block 30 Ground Control Stations, which are typically used to remotely pilot MQ-9A Reapers, to be capable of also operating its newer MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian drones.

To better accommodate a variety of hardware and software upgrades planned for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the House Armed Services Committee is asking the Joint Program Office to reconsider its timeline for designing -- and integrating -- a new power and thermal management system. The F-35 is going to need significantly more cooling power to support the totality of upgrades in the Block 4 modernization effort expected to be completed in fiscal year 2031. But the new PTMS is...

The Air Force is eyeing a new air-launched standoff weapon that is mass-producible and can travel at least 1,000 nautical miles, according to a recent notice.

The Pentagon's lengthy effort to arm the tri-variant F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with StormBreaker precision-strike glide bombs may be delayed another two years due to ongoing developmental struggles with the aircraft's new Technology Refresh-3 software, according to the government's top watchdog. To prevent further delays as the TR-3 effort continues to hit snags in becoming combat-capable, the F-35 Joint Program Office is now opting to decouple the StormBreaker -- also called Small Diameter Bomb Increment II -- full-rate production...