The Air Force is out of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System business, per Faykes, who said DOD had “terminated” the USAF portion of the program. Instead, the Air Force is to steer the technology it surfaced toward the Air Force’s next generation strike program. The Air Force has requested approximately $1.2 billion across the future years defense program to fund continued research and development for a long-range strike platform.
The Air Force’s nascent KC-Z program, aimed at developing a next-generation family of systems for aerial refueling, will look to launch its analysis-of-alternatives study in 2024, years earlier than originally planned. Originally, the analysis of alternatives for KC-Z was set for “maybe in the 2030s,” Paul Waugh, program executive officer…