Airforce

The Air Force under a Trump administration could choose to pursue a more advanced successor to the F-35 instead of the costly Next Generation Air Dominance platform to maintain air superiority, outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday.
Kendall suggested alternative paths for the Air Force’s future combat fleet at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event at the think tank’s Washington headquarters, in which he outlined a report on where the department needs to be in the next 25 years.
Authored by Kendall, the report, titled “The Department of the Air Force in 2050,” amounts to a sort of valedictory in the waning days of his leadership of the department — and a warning of the threats it could face in decades to come.
“The [Air Force and Space Force] missions don’t fundamentally change [by then], but both services need to go through a transformation” by 2050, Kendall said.
The Air Force will need to procure and ma..

PARIS — Denmark repatriated three more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters it had been using for pilot training in the U.S., finalizing a workaround to delivery delays by Lockheed Martin, after the Nordic country already flew home four aircraft in an older configuration in December.
The jets landed at Denmark’s Skrydstrup Air Base on Sunday after a trans-Atlantic flight from Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, with a stopover in the Azores, the Defence Ministry said in a statement Monday. That brings the local F-35 fleet to 11 aircraft, and a major step this year will be for the stealth fighters to partially take over air-policing duties from the country’s aging F-16 jets.
Lockheed Martin deliveries of F-35 jets were delayed last year due to issues with the so-called Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, upgrade. That left Denmark scrambling for options to meet F-35 rollout milestones and expand its locally based fleet beyond four aircraft, eventually prompting a decision in June to fly ..

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he’s tapping Troy Meink, second in command at the National Reconnaissance Office, to be secretary of the Air Force.
Meink began his career as a KC-135 tanker navigator in 1988. He went on to hold a variety of roles across the Air Force’s space enterprise, serving as a chief technical advisor to the Air Force Research Laboratory and later the deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space.
As principal director of the NRO, a position he’s held since 2020, Meink oversees the spy agency’s day-to-day operations. He’s played a key role in discussions around how to collaborate with the Space Force to provide ground target tracking capabilities from space, as well as the NRO’s efforts to leverage space-based commercial imagery services and launch a proliferated satellite constellation.
If confirmed, Meink will lead both the Air Force and the Space Force. His background in space-system acquisition and development could drive more funding..

The Air Force is further delaying the production contract for its newest trainer aircraft, the T-7 Red Hawk, and will expand its testing in a major reorganization of the program’s acquisition strategy.
The service originally planned to award Boeing a contract to build the first production T-7s in fiscal 2025 and would have bought seven jets this year. Under the Air Force and Boeing’s revised plan, the service will now award that contract in 2026, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said in a Wednesday release.
“Acquisition programs cannot be stagnant, even when they are fixed-price,” Hunter said. “This is why I’ve directed the T-7A team to implement updates to reduce risk and increase our confidence in the aircraft design, all to ensure we can deliver the T-7A to the warfighter when needed.”
The Air Force will also buy four additional production-representative test T-7s using 2025 research and development funds that will be delivered in fiscal ..

Among the resumes of President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key Pentagon posts, aspiring Air Force secretary Troy Meink’s stands out.
As a Defense Department insider with deep acquisition and technology-development experience, Meink would bring to the job a government background unlike that of Trump’s other DOD nominees. And his specialization in space could upend the priorities of a service typically dominated by Air Force interests.
Todd Harrison, a senior defense policy fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said choosing a space expert like Meink to lead the Air Force is “consequential” and indicates that space will be a high priority under the Trump administration.
“He is solidly from a space background, unlike any other secretary of the Air Force,” Harrison told Defense News. “I think that it must be intended to send a message that the Trump administration means business when it comes to the Space Force and the prioritizatio..

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A mysterious airstrip being built on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show, one of several built in a nation mired in a stalemated war threatening to reignite.
The airstrip on Abd al-Kuri Island, which rises out of the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling that waterway. That could be useful as commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea — a key route for cargo and energy shipments heading to Europe — has halved under attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. The area also has seen weapons smuggling from Iran to the rebels.
The runway is likely built by the United Arab Emirates, which has long been suspected of expanding its military presence in the region and has backed a Saudi-led war against the Houthis.
While the Houthis have linked their campaign to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaz..

MANILA, Philippines — Japan and British defense ministers met last week to discuss an ongoing joint fighter jet development program with Italy and to unveil the trinational headquarters for the project in Reading, 36 miles west of London.
Japan defense minister Gen Nakatani’s U.K. itinerary includes a meeting with Secretary of State for Defense John Healy on the Global Combat Air Programme and a visit to the headquarters of the GCAP International Government Organization (GIGO), the international body tasked with overseeing its development, production, and future exports.
“Today, Minister Nakatani and I have highlighted the positive progress being made on our important next-generation fighter jet program, to strengthen our security cooperation,” Healy was quoted as saying in a press release.
Partners are developing the fighter jets to enter service in 2035 while incurring less costs. The timeframe is crucial for Japan which will start retiring around 100 F-2s in ..

The first two F-15E Strike Eagles rigged with the latest war-fighting software touched down in the United Kingdom last week, according to the Air Force.
The duo of F-15Es arrived at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, on Jan. 16, equipped with the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System, or EPAWSS. The system allows F-15 fighters to detect and jam threats through geolocation and radar warning, helping them survive in dangerous environments.
The jets will be absorbed into the 494th and 492nd Fighter Squadrons.
“Having EPAWSS operational at RAF Lakenheath significantly enhances our ability to detect and counter threats, ensuring the safety and effectiveness of our crews,” said 494th Fighter Squadron Commander Lt. Col. Timothy Causey. “This advanced electronic warfare system, when combined with the F-35s, acts as a powerful force multiplier, transforming our operations and amplifying the 48th Fighter Wing’s impact in the battlespace.”
The Air Force..

The Trump administration’s plans to impose tariffs on a wide swathe of products and materials — reportedly including materials critical to the nation’s defense supply chain — could drive up some military programs’ costs and cause delays, analysts told Defense News.
The cascade of negative effects could become a byproduct of the intended benefits, which include pushing companies to expand domestic processing of materials, such as steel and rare earths that are vital to specialized microelectronics, and lessening America’s dependence on foreign suppliers.
No tariffs have officially been put in place by the new administration, and President Donald Trump has been vague on implementation details. The Washington Post reported Jan. 6 that Trump’s aides were considering far-ranging tariff plans on imports that are vital to national security and other key sectors.
Those reported plans, described to the Post by three people familiar with the matter, include applying tariffs to ..

The Air Force on Monday greatly expanded funding for the prototype engine for the service’s planned sixth-generation fighter.
General Electric of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Pratt & Whitney Engines of East Hartford, Connecticut, each received modifications to their initial Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion, or NGAP, contracts that bring the maximum amount for the prototype phase up to $3.5 billion apiece. That is more than three times higher than the $975 million ceiling on the original contracts awarded in 2022.
NGAP is expected to be the propulsion system for the planned Next Generation Air Dominance fighter. GE and Pratt are designing so-called “adaptive” engines, which shift to the most efficient thrust configuration for whatever situation a jet is in, to power NGAD.
The Pentagon seriously considered upgrading the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with adaptive engines. But their cost and limited ability to fit all models of the F-35 led the Pentagon to instead upgrade the F-35′s c..