On July 13, Boston's Merlin Labs announced that it would be working with the US Air Force to add autonomy to the C-130J Super Hercules cargo transport plane. Merlin's technology is a kind of advanced auto-copilot, designed to take over the responsibilities of one crew member in flight while being supervised by a human pilot. If the technology delivers as promised, it will allow planes that normally fly with two human pilots to operate with just one, and could even allow single-seater planes to fly fully autonomously. The same day that Merlin announced its partnership with the Air Force, it also announced a second round of $105 million in funding, which combined with a first round means the company has $130 million of runway to develop its technologies. This funding, says Merlin Labs CEO Matthew George, will help the company continue to develop "the world's most capable, safest and flexible pilot, that will eventually enable very large aircraft to fly with reduced crew and small aircraft to fly totally uncrewed."

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Stealth Bomber comes in to land at RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire on September 11th, 2019 - Close up underneath photos of the B-2 bombers - the world's most expensive and secretive planes - returning from a training exercise from Iceland. Senior Air Force leaders believe that current shortages in the U.S. bomber fleet are putting the service, and the nation, at tremendous risk of enemy attack. The U.S. Air Force needs as many as 225 bomber aircraft to meet current and future threats presented by rivals such as Russia and China, according to Gen. Timothy Ray, Commander of Global Strike Command and Strategic Command. Speaking at the 2019 Air Force Association Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Ray said the Air Force bomber inventory needs to jump from roughly 156 up to more than 220. "The number is North of 225. The B-1s and B-2 are older airplanes," Ray said at the conference.

As the Defense Department continues to embrace artificial intelligence and even plans to possibly use it in operations as soon as next year, the Air Force is solidifying its focus on the technology by releasing a new strategy that addresses the use, ethics and workforce needs of AI in the service. The strategy, released Thursday, identifies AI as crucial to fielding a future Air Force, executing multi-domain operations and confronting threats before they reach the level of actual combat. Signed by acting Air Force Secretary Matt Donovan and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, the document hones in on five focus areas that the service thinks will properly develop AI for the service's needs. One focus area identifies data as a strategic asset, given that AI will need mass amounts of data that standardized for use by AI algorithms. "We will review our corporate processes and reform underlying critical aspects of agility principled on government-purpose data rights to ensure we are consistently generating training quality data for algorithmic development," the strategy states.

The "Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan," which the Air Force released today, is an attempt to identify the battlefields of the future, and see what the Air Force needs to put in motion today to do its job right in the future. Unspoken, but alluded to throughout the document, is a move away from expensive, long-in-development aircraft. The Air Force can "no longer afford to develop weapon systems on the linear acquisition and development timelines using traditional approaches," reads the report. It continues later: "the Air Force must reject thinking focused on "next generation" platforms. Such focus often creates a desire to push technology limits within the confines of a formal program."