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The US s oldest bomber is still flying around the world, and its crews are training like we re going to war
The US s oldest bomber is still flying around the world, and its crews are training like we re going to war
Christopher WoodyJan 26, 2021, 22:53 IST
US Air Force B-52H bombers over the Pacific Ocean during a training mission.Pacific Air Forces
After more than a half-century in service, the
B-52 is still flying around the world, often making non-stop, round-trip flights.
Those long-range missions are a testament to the bomber s longevity, but they re also preparation for growing strategic competition with powerful adversaries.
China and Russia are preparing to destroy them.
Here s What You Need to Remember: “What systems will we use that we are not using today, as we look to the future to be light, lean and agile. There will not be enough Patriot and THAAD to go around. How do you buy down the risk and get ahead of the cost curve?” Brown asked.
The Pentagon is looking across the services to figure out ways to better defend forward-positioned bases, assets and forces from a growing sphere of highly sophisticated, long-range enemy attack threats.
Many small bases, facilities, troop locations and even major platforms such as stealth airplanes are positioned in high-risk areas potentially vulnerable to enemy attacks, particularly in light of the fact that adversaries such as Russia and China now possess a large arsenal of long-range precision attack weaponry able to hold U.S. targets at risk.
The future of armed conflict
America s approach to command and control goes peer to peer
Warfare’s worldwide web
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N OLD PROVERB says you should not put all your eggs in one basket. That is a particularly good maxim for matters military. America’s armed forces, for example, use modified Boeing jumbo jets, called
JSTARS, as airborne control centres for surveillance and operations. These planes are packed with sensors and their job is to orchestrate combat by detecting targets, tracking them and then assigning them to others to deal with. They have done this well for decades. But times change. With its big electronic signature, a
The importance of advancing loyal wingman technology Tate Nurkin December 21, 2020 The XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator, a long-range, high subsonic unmanned air vehicle, completed its inaugural flight March 5, 2019, at Yuma Proving Grounds, Ariz.. (U.S. Defense Department) On Nov. 11, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency revealed it had recently awarded five companies contracts to develop artificial intelligence agents to enable “mixed teams of manned and unmanned combat aircraft to conduct aerial dogfighting autonomously.” The announcement signaled the next phase of the Air Combat Evolution, or ACE, program that in August delivered the AlphaDogfight challenge in which an AI agent defeated a human-piloted F-16 in a series of five virtual dogfights.
Could America’s Drones Survive a War With China or Russia?
Could smaller, faster, and stealther drones be the answer?
The U.S. Air Force Reaper Drones were crucial to victories in the War on Terrorism by delivering lethal, decisive and precise hellfire missile attacks upon terrorist and insurgent targets. They also provided countless hours of real-time intelligence to ground commanders through video surveillance in the Middle East and around the world. In fact, these drones have been continually expanding mission scope through a growing weapons arsenal and even new air-to-air attack capability. Yet, could the Reaper survive a war against China or Russia? Probably not.