Senior Reporter, Congress and Defense Industry, Breaking Defense
Valerie covers the congressional and defense industry beat for Breaking Defense. Valerie has extensive national security reporting expertise, having served as the air warfare beat reporter for Defense News for five years. During that time her work was recognized by numerous awards, including the prestigious National Press Club Michael A. Dornheim Award for defense journalism. Valerie most recently covered commercial aerospace for Reuters. She also previously worked at Defense Daily and National Defense Magazine.
The winners of the first Collaborative Combat Aircraft autonomy contracts are classified but represent a mix of both traditional and non traditional defense companies, Air Force officials said.
“The government elected not to pursue the PBL,” said Greg Ulmer, president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. “So the current program is to annually procure options of the air vehicle’s supply contract to sustain the airplane.”
“We’re not just designing another stunt. We’re designing something you can go into full rate production on,” said David Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
“Spirit has had a successful ten-year partnership with Bell on this program and we will continue to work with them to deliver on our joint commitments,” Spirit AeroSystems spokesman Joe Buccino said.
Despite L3Harris’s investments in its Aerojet Rocketdyne subsidiary, “we are still struggling to get everything we need as a builder,” said Tim Cahill, Lockheed’s vice president of its missiles and fire control business.
A memorandum of understanding, unveiled today at Farnborough Airshow, lists training, logistics support and maintenance of drones like Boeing’s ScanEagle as potential areas for collaboration.
In an interview with Breaking Defense, Frank Kendall suggested the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter decision is farther off than estimated, as the service rethinks the threat landscape.
“We had a good start to the year, but this quarter you’ll see to be significantly challenged. It’ll look like it looked the third quarter of last year,” Boeing’s defense CEO Ted Colbert told reporters ahead of Farnborough Airshow.
“I think there are elements of the ground infrastructure where there may be opportunities for competition that we can add to the acquisition strategy for Sentinel,” said Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s top acquisition official.
“There is credit here for Boeing and the suppliers. They did really buckle down and get their pencils out and sharpen them and do a good job to bring the cost of the rapid prototyping program down,” said Andrew Hunter, the service’s top acquisition official.
A “truncated” version of Technology Refresh 3 software has enabled the Pentagon to resume deliveries, though a second software patch that would make the jets fully combat capable isn’t expected for at least another year.
