Air Force Materiel Command past and present will be on display at Boeing Plaza throughout the week at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024. Additionally, the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center’s Armament Directorate will have a number of weapons on display.
Adding to the impressive lineup put together by EAA, AFMC will have current active test aircraft on display, including the F-15EX, B-52, T-38, and C-12. The National Museum of the United States Air Force is providing former test platforms X-40, X-30, and Mach 5 Waverider. Here are some highlights on a few of the offerings:
F-15EX — From the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, the F-15EX is a two-seat, multirole fighter aircraft. It is a derivative of the Qatari F-15QA, which is a derivative of the USAF F-15E Strike Eagle. The F-15EX can employ a full complement of air-to-air weapons and has two additional weapons stations compared to the F-15E.
B-52 — From the 419th Flight Test Squadron, B-52s have been part of the strategic bomber force for the United States. The B-52 is capable of dropping or launching the widest array of weapons in the U.S. inventory, including gravity bombs, cluster bombs, precision-guided missiles, and joint direct-attack munitions.
C-12 — From the 419th Flight Test Squadron, the C-12 is a utility aircraft with a lot of versatility, and it flies a variety of missions at Edwards AFB. It can be used for instrumentation testing or flying several flight test engineers around at a time. The C-12s are also used for proficiency training and practicing parachute jumps.
X-40 — The unmanned, unpowered Boeing X-40A was the first-phase flight test vehicle for the U.S. Air Force’s Space Maneuver Vehicle program that began in the late 1990s. The program aimed to develop small, reusable, highly maneuverable spacecraft for deploying satellites and conducting surveillance and logistics missions.
X-51A — The experimental X-51A Waverider is an unmanned, autonomous supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight test demonstrator for the U.S. Air Force. It was designed to pave the way to future hypersonic weapons, hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and future access to space.
The AFLCMC Armament Directorate designs, develops, produces, fields, and sustains a family of air-to-ground and air-to-air munitions for both the United States and allied nations to defeat a spectrum of enemy targets. It will bring a number of munitions for display, including:
- The AGM-158 joint air-to-surface standoff missile (JASSM) — a next-generation cruise missile enabling the U.S. Air Force to destroy the enemy’s war-sustaining capabilities from outside its area air defenses.
- The ADM-160 miniature air-launched decoy (MALD) — a programmable, low-cost, modular, autonomous flight vehicle that mimics U.S. or allied aircraft to confuse enemy integrated air defense systems.
- The AIM-120 advanced medium range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM) — a radar-guided air-to-air missile with capability in both the beyond-visual-range and within‑visual-range arenas. A single-launch aircraft can engage multiple targets with multiple missiles simultaneously.
