Tag: usaf

US scraps airborne directed-energy weapon program – media

The US Air Force has suspended its attempts to put a 60kw-class laser weapon on the AC-130J, its close air support aircraft, The War Zone said on Tuesday.

The military news outlet has received confirmation that the Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) program has been scrapped directly by the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). It linked the decision to the retooling of the Pentagon’s arsenals for potential conflicts with peer competitors, such as China.

The Lockheed AC-130 is a version of the C-130 Hercules transport, which the US has been using for over five decades in ground attack operations. The current AC-130J Ghostrider version was introduced in 2015. AHEL was supposed to add a directed energy weapon to the toolkit available for the aircraft.

The War Zone argued that AHEL was axed after years of delays because the Pentagon is preparing for “high-end” warfare, as opposed to counter-insurgency operations. The laser system was touted as an efficient way to deal with militants in an environment where US air superiority is not challenged.

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Mysterious Drones Swarmed Langley AFB For Weeks

Langley Air Force Base, located in one of the most strategic areas of the country, across the Chesapeake Bay from the sprawling Naval Station Norfolk and the open Atlantic, was at the epicenter of waves of mysterious drone incursions that occurred throughout December. The War Zone has been investigating these incidents and the response to them for months. We know that they were so troubling and persistent that they prompted bringing in advanced assets from around the U.S. government, including one of NASA’s WB-57F high-flying research planes. Now the U.S. Air Force has confirmed to us that they did indeed occur and provided details on the timeframe and diversity of drones involved.

This spate of bizarre drone incursions deeply underscores the still-growing threats that uncrewed aerial systems present on and off traditional battlefields, and to military and critical civilian infrastructure, issues The War Zone has been highlighting in great detail for years.

“The installation first observed UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] activities the evening of December 6 [2023] and experienced multiple incursions throughout the month of December. The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration,” a spokesperson for Langley Air Force Base told The War Zone in a statement earlier today. “None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions.”

“To protect operational security, we do not discuss impacts to operations,” the statement added. “We don’t discuss our specific force protection measures but retain the right to protect the installation. Langley continues to monitor our air space and work with local law enforcement and other federal agencies to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities, and assets.”

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Everything New We Just Learned About The Collaborative Combat Aircraft Program

Major new details about the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program emerged at the Air & Space Forces Association’s recent annual Warfare Symposium. This includes a clearer picture of the effort’s autonomy goals, aggressive production plans, and future operational impacts. Though questions remain about the capabilities and costs of these future uncrewed aircraft, the CCA program looks set to have a number of disruptive impacts that could fundamentally reshape the Air Force.

As it stands now, the Air Force is planning to acquire at least 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, and potentially more, as part of an initial tranche known currently as Increment One. Five companies – Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril – are currently working on Increment One air vehicle designs. Dozens of additional firms are supporting the program through the development of autonomous technologies, sensors and other mission systems, command and control capabilities, and more. A down-select on the air vehicle side of the first increment, from the initial five contractors down to two or three, is expected later this year. The goal is to have a CCA design actually in production by 2028.

Increment One CCAs are expected, at least initially, to operate very closely with stealthy crewed combat jets, including a new sixth-generation design now under development as part of the Air Force’s larger Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative, as well as certain F-35As. CCAs could be partnered with other crewed aircraft and operate more independently, in the future.

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FLASHBACK: Air Force research: How to use social media to control people like drones

Facebook isn’t the only organization conducting research into how attitudes are affected by social media. The Department of Defense has invested millions of dollars over the past few years investigating social media, social networks, and how information spreads across them. While Facebook and Cornell University researchers manipulated what individuals saw in their social media streams, military-funded research—including projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program—has looked primarily into how messages from influential members of social networks propagate.

One study, funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), has gone a step further. “A less investigated problem is once you’ve identified the network, how do you manipulate it toward an end,” said Warren Dixon, a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering and director of the University of Florida’s Nonlinear Controls and Robotics research group. Dixon was the principal investigator on an Air Force Research Laboratory-funded project, which published its findings in February in a paper entitled “Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity.”

The research demonstrates that the mathematical principles used to control groups of autonomous robots can be applied to social networks in order to control human behavior. If properly calibrated, the mathematical models developed by Dixon and his fellow researchers could be used to sway the opinion of social networks toward a desired set of behaviors—perhaps in concert with some of the social media “effects” cyber-weaponry developed by the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ.

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Big Sur UFO Film: Government Whistleblower Reveals He Watched It

According to two former US Air Force officers—Lieutenant Bob Jacobs and Major Florenze Mansmann—a USAF photographic team based at Vandenberg AFB, California, tasked with filming missile test launches, inadvertently captured the image of a domed, disc-shaped UFO as it circled and then disabled—with four flashes of an intense beam of light—a dummy nuclear warhead flying downrange over the Pacific Ocean. Jacobs had been in charge of the telescopic photography site located at Big Sur, California, and Mansmann was Vandenberg’s chief photographic imagery analyst.

The date of the dramatic incident was September 15, 1964. Two days later, a highly-restricted screening of the spectacular footage took place at the base—attended by Jacobs, Mansmann, and two CIA officers who immediately classified the event Top Secret. The film was then confiscated by the pair and flown “back East” for analysis and storage, according to Major Mansmann. The destination was undoubtedly the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) which, it is now known, had already engaged in UFO photo analysis for years.

By the early 1980s, Jacobs felt that enough time had passed following the stunning UFO encounter to allow him to discuss it publicly. He has explained that, at the time of the 1964 film screening at Vandenberg, Major Mansmann had only ordered him “not to talk about” the unexpected filming of the UFO with anyone, pointedly saying that it had “never happened”. No mention was made of its Top Secret classification, for reasons that remain unclear to the former Lieutenant. Furthermore, because the two officers lost touch with each other after leaving the Air Force, 19 years passed before Mansmann was able confirm to Jacobs that the two mysterious men in civilian clothes at the screening were in fact CIA personnel.

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Air Force To Totally Revamp Its Structure To Compete With China

To counter the growing threat especially from China, the Air Force is undergoing major changes in how it operates and is organized. Dubbed “Reopitmization for Great Power Competition,” details of the initiative will be unveiled Monday at the Air and Space Forces Warfare Symposium in Denver by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and other senior leaders, an Air Force official told The War Zone.

The changes will run the gamut from how the Air Force organizes its operational units to how it acquires new weapons systems, Andrew Hunter, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, suggested on Friday.

“We’re driving towards…the ability to do integration across our organizational stovepipes in the acquisition community but also on the operational community across the department to a much higher degree,” said Hunter, speaking at an Atlantic Council event.

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BIDEN ADMIN DEPLOYED AIR FORCE TEAM TO ISRAEL TO ASSIST WITH TARGETS, DOCUMENT SUGGESTS

TARGETING INTELLIGENCE — THE information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November.

Since the start of Israel’s bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’s strike on October 7, Israel has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on the tiny Gaza Strip, according to a U.S. intelligence reportOpens in a new tab last month. And for the first timeOpens in a new tab in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly for hostage recoveryOpens in a new tab by special forces. At the time the drones were revealed, U.S. Gen. Pat Ryder insistedOpens in a new tab that the special operations forces deployed to Israel to advise on hostage rescue were “not participating in [Israel Defense Forces] target development.”

“I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” saidOpens in a new tab President Joe Biden three days after the Hamas attack. 

But several weeks later, on November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelinesOpens in a new tab for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting. 

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Air Force officer breaks silence on ‘red, glowing UFO the size of a football field’ hovering at low altitude over US space launch base in California – in event witnessed by over half a dozen military personnel: ‘People were screaming and scared’

Twenty years ago this October, military contractors working for Boeing reported ‘a gigantic floating red square’ UFO — over 100 yards long — hovering in the morning air over a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The eerie 2003 event first exploded into public view this July, in sworn testimony before Congress, but now an ex-US Air Force security officer has come forward to detail his official, rapid-response investigation into the UFO on the day it occurred.

‘This is not a joke,’ ex-USAF senior patrolman, Jeff Nuccetelli, told the Merged podcast Tuesday. ‘These are contractors with top secret clearances.’ 

Nuccetelli also revealed a second reported encounter with the ‘red square,’ in which two of his fellow USAF police patrol officers ‘got buzzed by the UFO.’

‘When I showed up, it’s just mayhem,’ as Nuccetelli recalled it. ‘Everybody’s excited. They’re scared. Everyone’s freaked out.’ 

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First Laser Weapon For A Fighter Delivered To The Air Force

The U.S. Air Force has received a high-energy laser weapon that can be carried by aircraft in podded form. The news came today when Lockheed Martin disclosed that at least one of the weapons, which it developed, has been delivered to the Air Force for test work. This effort falls within the wider framework of still-evolving plans to have laser-armed fighter jets that can engage enemy missiles, and possibly other targets too.

A report today from Breaking Defense confirmed that Lockheed Martin delivered its LANCE high-energy laser weapon to the Air Force in February this year. In this context, LANCE stands for “Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments.” The recipient for the new weapon is the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, which is charged with developing and integrating new technologies in the air, space, and cyberspace realms.

Tyler Griffin, a Lockheed executive, had previously told reporters that LANCE “is the smallest, lightest, high-energy laser of its power class that Lockheed Martin has built to date.”

Indeed, Griffin added that LANCE is “one-sixth the size” of a previous directed-energy weapon that Lockheed produced for the Army. That earlier laser was part of the Robust Electric Laser Initiative program and had an output in the 60-kilowatt class. We don’t yet know what kind of power LANCE can produce although there have been suggestions it will likely be below 100 kilowatts.

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Air Force Successfully Tested Secret New Stealth Missile With Mock Nuke, Reports Reveal

America’s nuclear weapons are aging and the Pentagon plans to spend more than $600 billion to keep the potentially world-ending weapons in fighting shape. One of these massive investments paid off in 2022 when the Air Force successfully tested a new secret stealth missile armed with a dummy version of a novel nuclear warhead, government reports have revealed.

As first reported by Air & Space Forces Magazine, the Air Force conducted nine successful tests of the classified Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile in 2022. One of those tests used a mock version of the new W80-4 nuclear warhead. Many details of the missile are classified and what precious little we’ve just learned comes from the Pentagon’s Selected Acquisition Reports for 2022, an National Nuclear Security Administration report on nukes, and a report from Sandia National Labs.

Altogether, the three reports paint a picture of a military spending billions to upgrade decades-old technology to keep America’s nuclear weapons viable. Both the LRSO and  W80-4 nuclear warheads are replacements for aging weapons systems. The LRSO is a replacement for the AGM-86, an air-to-ground missile first produced in 1980. Raytheon is building the missile and details about it are scarce, but the Air Force is pitching it as a stealthy and long range upgrade to the older missile.

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