Defense News
The U.S. Air Force’s rollout of its new B-21 Raider stealth bomber in December was just one piece of the puzzle in creating a future two-bomber fleet. The biggest changes are yet to come. Rolls-Royce and Boeing are working on a major upgrade to the service’s fleet of 76 Cold War-era B-52 Stratofortresses that will give them a new slate of F130 engines and keep them flying into the 2050s, alongside at least 100 B-21s.
Defense One
A Silicon Valley company is using artificial intelligence to help Ukraine better predict and prepare for Russian airstrikes like the ones that have knocked out power to thousands of Ukranian families. Starting last March, Scale AI began to collect imagery of places in the war-torn country where there might be heavy military activity, said Shands Pickett, the company’s head of federal deployments.
National Defense Magazine
Only a few minutes before the new B-21 Raider was rolled out of its hangar in Northrop Grumman’s high desert facility, its predecessor the B-2 Spirit flew above the crowd as a company employee sang the National Anthem. Comparisons between the two strategic bombers are inevitable as they are similar in shape—both so-called “flying wings.” Northrop Grumman also built the B-2, which made its public debut in Air Force Hangar 42 at the contractor’s Palmdale factory almost 34 years ago.
SpaceNews
The U.S. Space Force is requesting information on laser communications systems to connect satellites in medium and high orbits. Optical communications terminals that use lasers to beam data across space are being acquired by the Space Force’s Space Development Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for low Earth orbit constellations. The new request for information (RFI) issued Jan. 4 describes possible plans to expand the military’s information highway in space to much higher orbits.
POLITICO
Less than two weeks after cementing another major increase to the Pentagon budget, lawmakers are now talking about going the opposite direction—and are even raising the specter of across-the-board cuts that rocked the establishment just over a decade ago. An emerging deal between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and conservatives who initially opposed his bid for the gavel looks to exact deep spending cuts. This comes amid a looming partisan fight over the debt limit, compounding fears that overall spending is poised for a return to automatic reductions known as sequestration.
The War Zone
Nearly 14 years after officially ‘retiring’ its F-117A Nighthawk stealth combat jets, the Air Force may now be looking to keep them flying through at least 2034. A portion of the remaining F-117A fleet, flown by Air Force test pilots, has been very actively used for research and development, test and evaluation, and training purposes in recent years. This has included using the jets as ‘red air’ aggressors and as surrogates for stealthy cruise missiles during large-scale exercises.
The New York Times
An arc of gleaming black granite slabs etched with 36,634 names was unveiled on the National Mall over the summer, built to honor American service members who died fighting in the Korean War. People like Frederick Bald Eagle Bear, an Army corporal who was killed as he rallied his infantry squad to fend off an enemy attack. And Walder McCord, a bomber pilot who crashed during a night mission. And John Koelsch, a helicopter pilot who was shot down trying to rescue another pilot, died in captivity and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. But Lt. Koelsch’s name is spelled wrong, Lt. McCord’s name is not on the wall at all, and the name of Frederick Bald Eagle Bear, a member of the Lakota tribe, is so mangled that the polished granite lists him as Eagle B F Bald.
Miami Herald
The U.S. military has an idea to save its seaside bases from some of their most relentless foes: flooding, erosion and storm surge. The Defense Department spends billions of dollars to repair hurricane- and flood-related damage to its bases; in 2018, a particularly damaging series of storms caused $9 billion worth of destruction. Scientists—and military planners—expect that toll to grow as rising sea levels make storm surge and beach erosion worse.
Breaking Defense
Amid high-level concern over Iran’s decision to supply Russia with deadly suicide drones for the fight in Ukraine, a senior British defense official told Breaking Defense he believes Tehran made a “big mistake” because it’s also an opportunity for Western powers to uncover vulnerabilities in the Iranian systems. He also cast doubt on the effectiveness of any Russian technology that may be transferred to Iran in return.
DefenseScoop
The Department of the Air Force on Jan. 6 published a two-step, closed call for white papers under a commercial solutions opening as it pursues software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology to support its forthcoming Advanced Battle Management System and Joint All-Domain Command and Control architecture. The tech is viewed as a critical enabler of the data transport layer for the envisioned global network that the military wants to use to more rapidly and effectively connect sensors, platforms and end-users across multiple domains at the enterprise, regional and tactical levels.
One More Thing
The Washington Post
On a clear morning in late September 1953, seven weeks after the Korean War armistice, crews at the U.S.-run Kimpo Air Base near Seoul were astonished to see an unannounced warplane roaring in from the north. The jet was coming the wrong way on the takeoff patterns. Its wings were rocking and lights flashing. The North Korean pilot at the controls, Lt. No Kum-Sok, was trying to signal that he was not attacking. He was defecting.
