U.S. Air Force
Every UASFeed story on U.S. Air Force — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Defense & Combat
What Military Drones Actually Cost, Platform by Platform
A verified cost ladder across drone classes, from $500 FPV strike drones to a $618 million MQ-4C Triton, showing why unit cost, all-up-round cost, and program cost are not the same number.
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Defense & Combat
How Military Drone Pilots Are Trained: Inside the UAS Pipeline
From Air Force officers flying MQ-9 Reapers to Army 15Ws at Fort Huachuca to squad-level FPV familiarization, a look at how the U.S. military actually trains drone operators, and how South Korea and Ukraine compare.
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Defense & Combat
Air Force Awards CCA Production Contracts to Anduril and General Atomics Early
The U.S. Air Force selected General Atomics and Anduril Industries on June 17 to produce the first operational Collaborative Combat Aircraft — the FQ-42A and FQ-44A — targeting more than 150 combat-capable drones by decade's end under a unit cost ceiling near one-third of an F-35A.
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Defense & Combat
Phoenix Ghost: The Air Force's Classified Loitering Munition Family Built for Ukraine
AEVEX Aerospace's Phoenix Ghost — developed under a classified U.S. Air Force program before Russia's 2022 invasion — grew from a 121-drone Ukraine announcement into a $576 million, 5,000-unit program encompassing four named variants across two UAS groups. Here's what's confirmed, and what remains classified.
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Defense & Combat
From Wild Weasels to Loitering Munitions: How SEAD and DEAD Actually Work
Six decades of air-defense suppression trace how SEAD — the threat that forces radars off the air — and DEAD — the physical kill — evolved from Wild Weasel jets and anti-radiation missiles to autonomous loitering munitions that can outwait a radar gone silent.
