DefenseNews

Biden to nominate Frank Kendall as Air Force secretary

April 28, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has officially nominated Frank Kendall to serve as secretary of the Air Force and Gina Ortiz Jones for undersecretary of the Air Force. The announcement, made by the White House on Tuesday afternoon, confirmed reporting by Defense News earlier that morning. Kendall is best known as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official during the Obama…
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DefenseNews

US State Department clears Australia to buy MQ-9B drones

April 27, 2021
WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department on Friday approved a $1.6 billion foreign military sale of MQ-9B drones for Australia. The package includes up to 12 MQ-9B aircraft made by General Atomics, as well as Honeywell engines, ground control stations, training…
DefenseNews

Turkey’s removal from F-35 program to cause hike in engine price

April 24, 2021
WASHINGTON — The cost of the F-35′s engine is set to increase by 3 percent due to Turkey’s removal from the program in 2019, the head of Pratt & Whitney’s military engines division said Thursday. The company’s F135 engine — which is used in all three variants of the Lockheed Martin F-35 joint strike fighter — was initially manufactured with a total of 188 parts produced by…
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DefenseNews

Navy Stops Sending New Recruits to Army Training Base Used During Pandemic

April 21, 2021
Recruits line up after arriving on board Fort McCoy, a U.S. Army training center in western Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020. Recruit Training Command (RTC), Great Lakes, Ill., is working with the Army at Fort McCoy to establish a restriction of movement (ROM) site for Navy recruits before entering boot camp. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nikita Custer/U.S. Navy) Navy recruits will no…
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DefenseNews

US Army bracing for budget hit next year

April 21, 2021
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is bracing for a possible large budget cut in fiscal 2022, a defense official told Defense News. The service is preparing contingencies should it face a “huge cut,” which means the Army would potentially have to put modernization and…
DefenseNews

US Army picks 5 innovators to help increase its howitzer firing rate

April 20, 2021
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has picked five small business innovators to build prototypes intended to help increase the rate of fire of self-propelled howitzers as well as in future systems, Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, who is in charge of the service’s Long-Range Precision Fires modernization efforts, told Defense News on April 15. The SPARTN Fire Faster project is one of three lines of effort…
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