The Beloved “Gooney Bird”
The Dec. 17, 1935 maiden flight of the DC-3 at Clover Field in Santa Monica, Calif., did not produce huge …
U.S. Air Force
F136 Engine Hitting Milestones in Development Effort
The F136 advanced turbofan engine for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) will almost certainly have its future …
Air Force Ponders Black Hawk Plan for Common Vertical Lift Support Platform Program
Under a proposal now being debated in the Pentagon, the Air Force would take advantage of an obscure 1932 law …
Air Force Leaders Still Hope for New Engines for E-8C Joint STARS
The Air Force is moving more slowly than it once expected to re-engine its Boeing E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack …
Despite Setbacks, JSF Achieves Milestones
The JSF program came under increased scrutiny this year, with cost overruns and flight test setbacks regularly making the news …
Front End of the Kill-Chain
On June 4, 2010, a Northrop Grumman-owned BAC 1-11 launched from the company’s ES3 (Electronic Systems) Flight Test Facility at …
Reserve Component Test Pilots Wring Out Aircraft
At a test center in the American West that has mostly escaped public notice, military pilots are wringing out two …
Return of the Military Airship
Airships, blimps, aerostats, balloons, dirigibles, zeppelins – once aloft, these very different lighter-than-air (LTA) platforms look very much alike. They …
Navigation Warfare
The scene is a politically unstable, strategically important country where terrorists are hiding in a large cave system. In addition …
UAVs Drive SATCOM Modernization
The growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), like Predator and Global Hawk aircraft, is making military communications satellite bandwidth …