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Air Force gives 3D-printed rocket company Cape Canaveral launch pad
Relativity Space, a startup that aspires to create 3D printed rockets, has secured a launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The company announced Thursday a five-year agreement with the US Air Force that will allow the company to operate out of Launch Complex 16 (LC-16) at the at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket wins Air Force contract
The US Air Force has just awarded three aerospace corporations contracts worth $2.2 billion in an effort to ensure that it can rely on domestic partners for launch vehicles. One of those companies is the Jeff Bezos-owned private space company Blue Origin, which will receive $500 million for the development of its New Glenn heavy lift orbital rocket. New Glenn was designed to have a reusable first stage and have the power to fly a 50-ton payload to Low Earth Orbit or a 14-ton load to geosynchronous orbit.
Next-gen GPS satellite launch delayed again
Vice President Mike Pence laid out plans for the US Space Force on Thursday, calling out an advanced type of satellite, GPS III, that is apparently resistant to tampering. According to Bloomberg, however, this specific orbital machinery has been delayed for the last four years, and the launch date has slipped yet again.
Trump directs Pentagon to form a Space Force military branch
It looks like the US could have a sixth military branch sometime in the future, one focused entirely on space. President Trump said during a National Space Council meeting today that he has called for the development of a Space Force, CNBC reports. "I am hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces," he said. "Our destiny beyond the Earth is not only a matter of national identity but a matter of national security."
Air Force general behind government 5G memo leaves White House
That scrapped proposal for a goverment-run 5G network is triggering a political fallout. A senior official has confirmed to the Washington Post that the author of the memo pushing for the 5G network, Brigadier General Robert Spalding, has left his position as the National Security Council's senior director for strategic planning and returned to the Air Force. He wasn't fired, the insider claimed, and this wasn't prompted by the leak -- rather, the Council decided against renewing his position in part because his push for government 5G had "gone beyond his role."
Air Force reveals difference between ULA and SpaceX launch prices
The US Air Force has revealed how much the government can save by having SpaceX launch some of its satellites instead of relying purely on United Launch Alliance. Launch prices used to be discussed in vague terms until the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense to include a budget for national security space programs in its annual reports. Now, the Air Force's budget request (PDF) for the next few years, which Ars Technica got its hands on, finally has solid numbers we can look at: It shows that the division expects to pay as much as $423 million per launch by the year 2021 if it allows ULA -- a Boeing and Lockheed joint venture -- to have a monopoly on its launches.
SpaceX will launch a secretive space drone for the Air Force
SpaceX fought hard for the right to launch Air Force projects and it has landed a pretty prestigious one. Elon Musk's company will fire the X-37B miniature spaceplane into orbit with the Falcon 9, taking over from the reliable Atlas V built by United Launch Alliance, according to Reuters. And here's the kicker: It will launch the space shuttle-like drone in just two months, meaning it will be SpaceX's first mission for the Air Force.
The Pentagon is hunting ISIS using big data and machine learning
Military and civilian intelligence analysts "overwhelmed" by the sheer volume of video surveillance data recorded over the America's numerous military incursions against ISIS will soon get some relief. The Pentagon announced on Monday that it is tasking its newly-minted Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team (AWCFT), dubbed Project Maven, with using big data and machine learning to accelerate the process of discovering actionable intelligence in all that aerial imagery.
ICYMI: A 'Back to the Future' jacket and the super-secret space shuttle returned
While manned shuttle missions ended back in 2011, the US government is still sending reusable spacecraft into orbit. This past weekend the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle returned from its super-secret two year mission. Speculation about what the craft was doing up there all this time ranges from; testing autonomous navigation system to evaluating if the X-37B is suitable for surveillance.
Air Force enlists hackers to hunt bugs in its site
Bug bounties have been a staple among startups and online businesses since the days of Netscape Navigator but the federal government has been slow to adopt the beneficial code hunts. However, a year after the DoD's first such program, Hack The Pentagon, the Air Force announced on Wednesday that it will be hosting one of its own next month.
Drone operators outnumber any other type of Air Force pilot
While some might still think of joystick-wielding aviators as the stuff of science fiction, that's no longer the case. A top general told reporters last week that there are now more jobs for drone pilots in the US Air Force than there are for pilots of traditional manned aircraft. Specifically, the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones are set to have more than 1,000 pilot operators in the 2017 fiscal year -- that's more than the 889 pilots who fly the troop-transporting C-17, or the 803 flying F-16 fighter jets, according to Military.com.
The US is preparing to modernize its nuclear weapons systems
The United States has not updated its nuclear weapons program in decades, but in February President Barack Obama allocated more than $1 trillion to the modernization of the country's nuclear stockpile. Perhaps he got tired of hearing jokes about servicemen using floppy disks to activate missiles, but regardless of the catalyst, the US is preparing to create a brand new nuclear weapons system that includes connecting its missiles via a secure network. In 2017, 50 men and women on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board will be tasked with figuring out what could go wrong in this brave new world, Defense One reports.
ICYMI: Orbital space junk is putting us in jeopardy
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: The US Air Force is moving its Space Surveillance Telescope to Australia to track space junk littering geosynchronous orbit. That's the orbit 22,000 miles away from our planet where satellites mirror the Earth's rotation so that they don't appear to move. The Department of Justice story about facial recognition is here, while that darling sneezing baby (who eschews costumes) is here. If you enjoy the cartoon humor that is an engine giving up on a job, that's here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
DARPA's telescope will keep the military's satellites safe
DARPA is officially done developing the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) and has handed it over to the US Air Force. Pentagon's most adventurous arm worked with the military division for over a decade to build the SST, which was designed to monitor space junk that pose a threat to satellites in orbit. It's been observing asteroids and near-Earth objects since 2011 in New Mexico, but now that it has officially changed hands, the SST will go through some big changes. Perhaps the biggest of which is its home: the Air Force plans to uproot the whole structure and ship it off to Australia.
Air Force boosts drone pilot bonuses to keep up with demand
It's no secret that the US Air Force is doing everything it can to recruit and keep drone pilots, and now it's resorting to a very direct solution: cold, hard cash. The military branch is offering $10,000 more per year in bonuses to those pilots who renew their active duty commitment for 5 years. They were already getting a hefty $25,000 extra per year, but this is a huge incentive -- if a pilot is active for the full term, that's a total of $175,000 above and beyond their usual pay.
US Air Force says the F-35 is ready for combat
The F-35 Lightning II has faced more than a few technical problems and cost overruns in the 15 years since Lockheed Martin first won its production contract, but it's nearly done overcoming those hurdles. The US Air Force has declared that the F-35A (that is, the conventional takeoff model) is officially ready for combat. The first squadron to get the advanced jet, the 34th Fighter Squadron at Utah's Hill Air Force Base, can now deploy it on real-world missions if necessary.
Combat AI beats the Air Force's top tactical experts
A new artificial intelligence flight combat system dubbed ALPHA has taken on one of the Air Force's top tactical experts and won. Retired USAF Colonel Gene Lee -- an experienced combat instructor with "considerable fighter aircraft expertise" -- was repeatedly shot down during engagements with ALPHA in a high-fidelity air combat simulation. Lee called his computerized opponent "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date."
SpaceX wins its first military launch contract
Elon Musk has been fighting to be treated with the same level of respect as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and it looks like his persistence has paid off. Reuters is reporting that the US Air Force has handed SpaceX a contract worth $83 million to launch the next GPS satellite into orbit. It's a big deal, because until now, only Lockheed and Boeing (through the United Launch Alliance) have been permitted to fling objects into the heavens on the Air Force's behalf. The launch will take place in May 2018 from Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket, although while Musk has won the battle, he might also be well on the way to winning the war.
Watch DARPA's tiny drone do 45 MPH indoors, autonomously
It's been a bit since we last saw DARPA's bird-of-prey inspired drone system, but the government's mad science wing hasn't been sitting idle. The Fast Lightweight Autonomy program recently took one of its drones on an indoor test flight where there little quadrocopter that could zoomed around a cluttered warehouse in a Cape Cod Air Force base at 45 MPH -- the target speed and environment the outfit was aiming for back in 2014.
Air Force drones had a record number of crashes last year
The Air Force has a huge drone problem that's costing the military division a pretty penny. A total of 20 drones were completely destroyed or sustained at least $2 million in damages when they crashed in 2015, according to The Washington Post. That's the highest number of mishaps within a year so far, over twice the number of accidents in 2014. Half of those incidents involve the military's favorite surveillance and airstrike machine, the Reaper drone, which costs the Pentagon $14 million each when fully loaded.
