Wingman: Ready. Willing. Able

Aug. 1, 2017

This article is only available in PDF format. Read the article.

Related Content

Air Force to Reduce Tuition Assistance for Troops

Sept. 29, 2020
Starting Oct. 1, the Department of the Air Force will only pay for $3,700 of college tuition for Airmen and space professionals each fiscal year, regardless of whether they’re engaged in undergraduate or graduate studies, according to a Sept. 29 release. That's a decrease of $800 per-fiscal-year from 2020 tuition…

Air Force Wants Help Teaching its Weapon Swarm How to ‘Think’

Sept. 29, 2020
The Air Force Research Laboratory wants to make its budding swarm of semi-autonomous weapons smarter. “Golden Horde” aims to connect munitions like Boeing’s Small Diameter Bomb I in a swarm that can work through a list of targets on its own, and that could redirect individual weapons as needed. AFRL…

Space Force Will Eventually Put Troops in Orbit, Ops Boss Says

Sept. 29, 2020
Military troops in the Space Force will someday deploy to orbit, one of the service's top operations officials said Sept. 29. “At some point, yes, we will be putting humans into space,” Maj. Gen. John E. Shaw, head of the Space Force's Space Operations Command and part of U.S. Space…

USAF, Navy Practice Joint Air Ops over Persian Gulf

Sept. 29, 2020
Air Forces Central Command and its U.S. Navy counterpart recently teamed up for a joint air operations in support of maritime surface warfare (AOMSW) exercise in the Persian Gulf, according to a Naval Forces Central Command release. Exercises like the one held from Sept. 23-24 “serve to enhance and solidify”…

Snapshot: DOD and COVID-19

Sept. 28, 2020
Here's a look at how the Defense Department is being impacted by and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

AFRL’s ‘ROBOpilot’ Returns to Flight After Mishap

Sept. 28, 2020
The Air Force Research Laboratory’s robotic pilot has returned to the sky, following a mishap that grounded the system last year. The AFRL Center for Rapid Innovation and DZYNE Technologies Incorporated’s ROBOPilot flew for about 2.2 hours on Sept. 24 at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The ROBOpilot system is added…

How California Guard MQ-9s Are Helping With Fire Response

Sept. 28, 2020
California Air National MQ-9s have flown the length of the entire state, helping to coordinate responses to more than 24 fires that have been burning in the past two months. As of Sept. 28, there have been 7,982 total wildfires, burning more than 3.6 million acres and damaging or destroying…

Whiteman Hosts Drive-In Air Force Ball During Pandemic

Sept. 28, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic inspired the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., to pioneer a new kind of USAF birthday celebration: a drive-in Air Force ball. The idea to transition the ball from an in-person party to a drive-in celebration stemmed from unique challenges presented by the ongoing…