WASHINGTON — Bell’s future vertical lift technology demonstrator, the V-280 Valor tiltrotor, has finished its flying career, according to a June 24 company announcement.
The demonstrator was built for the U.S. Army Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator program and flew for the first time in December 2017. It spent the last three-and-half years proving out the service’s requirements for…
LONDON — The high costs of supporting F-35s and a failure to quickly integrate the MBDA Meteor missile to the aircraft could slow British plans to buy more of the jets, defence secretary Ben Wallace warned June 23.
Wallace told Britain’s Parliamentary defence select…
A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook departs from Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, Dec. 27, 2009. (Francisco V. Govea II/U.S. Air Force)
Clear, concise decision-making. That’s what American citizens — and U.S. allies — expect from our government leaders.
WASHINGTON – One of the U.S. Navy’s first major projects under a 20-year shipyard modernization effort is facing cost-overruns and schedule slips, an unexpected circumstance which the Navy is hoping to learn from as it continues through the $20-billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program.
Though the Navy is predominately in a planning phase of program, generating computer models of…
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is planning to field its first mobile medium-range missile battery no later than September 2023 with three more batteries to follow, according to FY22 budget justification documents.
Defense News was first to report that the Army was pursuing…
More cost overruns are coming for Boeing as the KC-46 program logs another two technical deficiencies
June 18, 2021
WASHINGTON — Boeing will have to pay to fix two new technical problems afflicting the KC-46 refueling tanker, which the U.S. Air Force has designated as “category 1” deficiencies that rank among the program’s most critical issues.
The Air Force has discovered that…
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is set to begin development and integration of a high-power microwave capability to destroy small drone threats beginning in fiscal 2022, according to budget justification documents released with the financial request.
The service plans to spend more than $50 million in FY22 to develop technology to counter small drones and is working jointly across the services to…
Another Boeing-Airbus tanker war is coming soon
June 17, 2021
WASHINGTON — Boeing and Airbus could find themselves duking it out as early as next year to provide aerial refueling aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, reigniting a bitter battle between Boeing’s KC-46 and Airbus’s A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport.
The Air Force on…
WASHINGTON — House and Senate lawmakers are again pushing to boost the Missile Defense Agency’s budget after Congress added $1.3 billion last fiscal year.
The MDA’s request in fiscal 2022 focuses on the development of future capabilities including a next-generation…
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s Ship to Shore Connector program has become expensive enough to breach Nunn-McCurdy cost thresholds laid out in the decades-old acquisition law, but the service said in a June 11 statement the program has stabilized and will continue in production.
The Navy’s SSC program is the replacement for the Landing Craft Air Cushion, or LCAC, that was designed and built…
