DefenseNews

France rethinks military light-drone acquisition as Army falls behind

PARIS — France is changing its acquisition process for light military drone unmanned aerial vehicles to become more nimble and signed a pact with local drone makers as the country’s Army threatens to fall behind in a technology that military leaders say is remaking warfare. French Armed Forces Minister Sebastian Lecornu signed a “defense UAV pact” at the Eurosatory defense show here on…
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DefenseNews

How many F-35s to buy? Draft defense bills disagree

The Senate’s proposed National Defense Authorization Act would leave the military’s planned purchases of 68 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in fiscal 2025 unchanged. The chamber’s draft NDAA, which members of the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled Friday, represents…
DefenseNews

GM Defense eyes $1 billion European market for tactical vehicles

PARIS — GM Defense hopes that a resurgence of the car giant’s commercial business in Europe will pave the way for sales of militarized trucks used by special operations units, a company executive said.The company makes the Infantry Squad vehicle, based on the Colorado pickup truck, which is in production for vanguard U.S. Army formations including the 82nd Airborne Division, and is readying a…
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DefenseNews

Defense spending bill would defund Biden’s Gaza pier

The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday advanced its fiscal 2025 defense spending bill while adding a provision that would eliminate the military’s makeshift pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip, which has struggled to deliver an adequate level of humanitarian aid…
DefenseNews

Osprey fleet won’t return to full flight operations until 2025

The U.S. military doesn’t expect its fleet of more than 400 V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft to fully resume normal flight operations until at least the middle of 2025, a Navy admiral in charge of the joint program told a House Oversight subcommittee Wednesday. Naval Air Systems Command boss Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, whose office oversees Ospreys tiltrotor aircraft uses the Air Force, Navy and Marine…
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DefenseNews

V-22 Osprey: Investigation into Safety and Oversight

A House Oversight Committee panel that is investigating the safety and oversight of the V-22 Osprey aircraft following a string of fatal crashes has not received critical data or accident reports that its members requested months ago, two committee staffers told The…
DefenseNews

Air Force, Space Force unveil tool for AI experimentation

The Air Force and Space Force launched a generative AI tool on Monday, encouraging airmen and guardians to experiment with using the technology for tasks like summarizing reports, IT assistance and coding. The services want to use the tool, which it’s calling the Non-classified Internet Protocol Generative Pre-training Transformer, or NIPRGPT, to better understand how AI could improve access to…
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