Defense

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Boeing plans to deliver the U.S. Air Force’s first T-7A Red Hawk on Tuesday, marking a major milestone for the trainer aircraft that has struggled with safety issues, software problems and schedule slips. In a briefing at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Col. Kirt Cassell, who leads the service’s…

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — As the U.S. Air Force develops its next generation of command and control, it is using two measures of success: how quickly forces can be tasked and coordinated in a fight; and how tolerant digital systems are of new technologies and applications. To ensure the U.S. military outwits, outmaneuvers and outshoots a powerful adversary such as China or Russia, the Pentagon has…

LONDON — British lawmakers say the Royal Air Force now lacks capabilities across combat, air transport and early warning aircraft. A Ministry of Defence command paper in 2021 ordered cuts to aircraft numbers that are creating a combat air shortfall in jet numbers that will persist into the 2030s, the Parliamentary defence committee said in a report on aviation procurement released Sept. 10. The…

WASHINGTON — Textron’s Bell tapped GE Aerospace to develop a host of digital systems for its much-anticipated Black Hawk utility helicopter successor. The arrangement, announced Sept. 7, will see GE Aerospace working on a common open-architecture digital backbone as well as a voice-and-data recorder and a health-awareness network that facilitates predictive maintenance for the Bell V-280…