Defense

WASHINGTON — The Army is using internal development and small-business ideas to figure out how to fire artillery faster, exploring every facet from how projectiles are stored all the way to automated reloading. Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, who is in charge of Long-Range Precision Fires modernization, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual…

WASHINGTON — By the end of 2020, F-35 fighter jets rolling off Lockheed Martin’s production line will be equipped with a modified lightning protection system that will fix problems discovered earlier this year, the company’s head of production said. In June, the government’s F-35 Joint Program Office imposed flight restrictions on the F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing variant —…

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army still plans to release of its request for proposals in December to replace the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, and it wants industry to prioritize an open architecture in its designs. “The network is almost more important in some ways than building the combat vehicles,” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, program executive officer of ground combat systems, told Defense…

WASHINGTON — The Army will see a significant shift in funding from its current fleet to new and modern capability designed to fight in multidomain operations in fiscal 2023, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told Defense News in an Oct. 8 interview. The service has conducted several rounds of “night court” reviews already, a deep dive across the Army’s portfolios to determine whether money…