Air Force Materiel Command has opened at Edwards AFB, Calif., a range mission control room built specifically to monitors tests of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 Integrated Test Force, comprising military, government civilian, contractor, and foreign partner personnel, are conducting testing of the F-35 and will have about 40 flight test engineers manning the control room. SrA. Jason Hernandez reports that the new control room is unique because it is “entirely personal-computer based.” The 412th Range Control Squadron, which maintains and operates all the Edwards control rooms, decided that existing control rooms simply didn’t have enough capacity to incorporate JSF testing.
The Air Force will look to the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in a closed solicitation that will create the Air Force's first university-affiliated research center (UARC), Air Force leaders said. The center will study tactical autonomy. The DAF will select the center's location from one of 11…