Just last week, a senior Air Force official said the service had a total of 37 continual combat air patrols of remotely piloted vehicles supporting the fight in Southwest Asia. On Monday, service officials updated that total: it now stands at 39. This includes 31 MQ-1 Predator patrols, seven MQ-9 Reaper overhead orbits—up two from the five reported last week—and one RQ-4 Global Hawk CAP, they told the Daily Report. Also, the number of MC-12 Liberty aircraft that the Air Force is fielding to augment its information-gathering RPVs should grow to 37 by next July, up two from the 35 reported last week, they said. Currently the service is operating six MC-12s in the war theater.
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…