The Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman $12.5 million to begin the engineering process to replace the engines on the service’s fleet of E-8 Joint STARS ground surveillance aircraft. Pratt & Whitney is supplying the JT8D-219 engines.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…