Empowered Airmen

We live in a world that is driven by rapidly changing technology and an environment that includes aggressive and capable global competitors. Airmen are key to cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, recognizing and understanding our competition, and thinking of creative ways we can reshape the design of our Air Force. The Air Force must accelerate, must change, and must prepare for the future!

This page is dedicated towards highlighting the accomplishments of our talented Airmen at all levels and to show the impact they can make when they are informed and empowered to problem solve and make smart recommendations and decisions.

Accelerate Change or Lose graphic — EMPOWERED AIRMEN ACCELERATE CHANGE ACROSS AIR FORCE

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Empowering Airmen

CMSAF shares time with Airmen during BMT graduation

Acting SecAF visits Hill AFB, focuses on supporting Airmen and Guardians

CSAF joins KC-46A operational survey sortie

48th CES enhance mission readiness through virtual reality

Airmen prepare a F-16 Fighting Falcon for takeoff

Video by Tom Shortridge

DARPA Subterranean Challenge Cave Circuit Recap

DARPA

Nov. 18, 2020 | 3:07

Sixteen teams chose their roster of virtual robots and sensor payloads, some based on real-life subterranean robots, and submitted autonomy and mapping algorithms that SubT Challenge officials then tested across eight cave courses in the cloud-based SubT Simulator. Their robots traversed the cave environments autonomously, without any input or adjustments from human operators. The Cave Circuit Virtual Competition teams earned points by correctly finding, identifying, and localizing up to 20 artifacts hidden in the cave courses within five-meter accuracy.

The DARPA Subterranean Challenge seeks to better equip warfighters and first responders to explore human-made tunnel systems, urban underground, and natural cave networks, while decreasing risk to human lives. The SubT Challenge Systems and Virtual competitions aim to create a community of multidisciplinary teams from wide-ranging fields to foster breakthrough technologies in autonomy, perception, networking, and mobility for underground environments. The Tunnel Circuit took place in August 2019. The Urban Circuit took place in February 2020. The Final Event incorporating all three underground environments is targeted for Fall 2021.