WASHINGTON: Frank Kendall, the head of Pentagon acquisition, will not visit the Paris Air Show next month. In contrast to the flurry of senior American leaders who made it to the Farnborough Air Show last year when the F-35 was expected to make its first public appearance overseas, the Paris show looks to be a considerably…
By Colin ClarkA new approach to speed, scale and efficiency for the industrial base
Radars, EW, EO/IR, space imagery, and microelectronics are brought under one roof for a streamlined approach to common people and factories.
WASHINGTON: If anyone at the White House had hoped the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee would be more compliant than his predecessor, the defense bill out today should end their illusions. Sure, Rep. Mac Thornberry has consulted closely with the Pentagon and his ranking member on issues like acquisition reform. But Thornberry’s draft…
By Colin Clark
CAPITOL HILL: The House Armed Services Committee wants to add up to six F-35B STOVL jets to the Marine Corps budget, even as it demands new oversight into Lockheed Martin’s long-troubled F-35 program. The House draft National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2016 would not add any F-35Cs, the Navy variant. Instead, it will include up to a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PENTAGON: “You ever seen what an attack helicopter does to a small boat? That’s a Cuisinart.” The Navy’s long been nervous about the survival of its high-cost high-seas warships in coastal knife fights. (That anxiety drove the development of the controversial Littoral Combat Ship). Iran, in particular, is notorious for its shallow water mini-submarines and…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, head of the F-35 program, shut up a room full of reporters yesterday. That’s right. None of us said a word for about 15 minutes yesterday while Bogdan told us he wanted to see us get our facts right about the F-35 program. But what really got our attention was his…
By Colin Clark
PENTAGON: The F-35‘s highly sensitive sensors suffer a basic problem right now: They often aren’t sure what they are detecting. That results in a high rate of false alarms. The key to fixing this lies in building highly complex data files — what we can colloquially call the threat library — and integrating them with the Joint Strike…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: Sen. McCain SASC Spox Rejects Air Force Rationale For Retiring A-10 ORLANDO: Sequestration. Base closures. Readiness. Modernization. ISIL. Russia. The list of challenges faced by Air Force leaders is long. But none may be more intractable or politically difficult than retiring the A-10 “Warthog” close air support fleet. The Air Force has never really wanted to…
By Colin Clark
ROC-X – The solution to organic precision strike capabilities
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
PENTAGON: The Navy 2016 budget yields to Congress’s strong opposition to the service’s previous efforts to cut the active fleet to save money. It funds nuclear refueling and overhaul of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington –that it had tried to retire — and modifies its plan to put 11 cruisers and an amphibious ship…
By Otto KreisherWASHINGTON: Lockheed and the government made it official today, signing the $4.7 billion eighth Low Rate Initial Production contract for the F-35. Here’s the full price and the official language: “Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $4,123,746,486 modification to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive firm-target contract (N00019-13-C-0008) for…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: It’s finally official. After months of senior program and Pentagon officials saying they were really close to a deal, Lockheed Martin and the Joint Program Office just announced they’ve got agreement in principle for the Defense Department to buy another 29 Joint Strike Fighters. The eighth Low Rate Initial Production contract includes 19 F-35As, six F-35Bs…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: If you know both the enemy and yourself, you will not be defeated in a hundred….ducks? “We’ve got twenty shotgun shells and a hundred ducks” in the electronic warfare world today, lamented Strategic Command’s Rear Adm. John R. Haley this morning. “There are so many devices out there and so many things being used.”…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: When the F-35A exploded June 23 on the runway, it took about 10 days before the Pentagon had worked out how to communicate to the public, to the Navy, Marines and Air Force and to its international partners what had happened, was happening and would happen. Today, Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said that his…
By Colin Clark
FARNBOROUGH AIR SHOW: The biggest story at the show this year was all about something that didn’t happen: the foreign debut of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. With no new planes or helicopters coming from Europe’s military aircraft builders, the F-35 would have generated a great deal of comment. It did anyway, but most of…
By Colin Clark
FARNBOROUGH AIR SHOW: It’s a remarkable story, really. A fairly tiny country, Norway, decides to place a $1.3 billion bet on developing one of the world’s most capable missiles to be fired from what will probably become the world’s most popular fighter, the F-35. The missile, known as the Joint Strike Missile, may become a…
By Colin Clark
