u.s. Air Force – Impact Lab

The drones would fly alongside Air Force warplanes, doing jobs too dangerous or dull for pilots.

The Air Force is soliciting the aerospace industry to provide flyable “Skyborg” drones by 2023.

The drones will be powered by artificial intelligence, capable of taking off, landing, and performing missions on their own.

Skyborg will not only free manned pilots from dangerous and dull missions but allow the Air Force to add legions of new, unpiloted, cheap planes.

The U.S. Air Force is finally pushing into the world of robot combat drones, vowing to fly the first of its “Skyborg” drones by 2023. The service envisions Skyborg as a merging of artificial intelligence with jet-powered drones. The result will be drones capable of flying alongside fighter jets, carrying out dangerous missions. Skyborg drones will be much cheaper than piloted aircraft, allowing the Air Force to grow its fleet at a lower cost.

Continue reading… “The Air Force’s AI-powerd ‘Skyborg’ drones could fly as early as 2023”

At 6:43 am US eastern time today, the Air Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane broke a new spaceflight record, surpassing the 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes its predecessor spent in orbit just a couple years prior.

The X-37B, explained: The Air Force is notoriously tightlipped about the X-37B program. The space plane itself, built by Boeing, is 29 feet long and 9.6 feet tall, boasting a wingspan of nearly 15 feet. It’s launched vertically aboard a rocket and lands horizontally on a runway. The current X-37B mission is the fifth of its kind (Orbital Test Vehicle 5 – OTV-5) and was launched in September 2017 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Continue reading… “The U.S. Air Force’s shadowy X-37B space plane has broken a space flight record”