Chronically high operating costs might be tamed with a new deal. A new sustainment contract between the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) and Lockheed Martin, inked in September, will give the company a chance to bring down operating costs over the next three years.
Technology
Reports of production troubles on the SpaceX rocket that could contend for military cargo deliveries happened to coincide with a different company’s concept receiving an early nod—one that might not require a rocket at all.
The Space Force has started to carve out new personnel rotations to accommodate advanced training and has turned to units for training ideas while beginning to envision what Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman called an “operational test and training infrastructure,” including new simulators. Like the ...
The Air Force is moving away from weapons meant to strike specific types of targets and instead toward generic munitions with "swappable" payloads that can be used in a variety of ways, said Air Force Global Strike Command planner Maj. Gen. Jason R. Armogost. Other ...
President Joe Biden will nominate former Air Force acquisitions chief William LaPlante to serve as the Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisition, one of the remaining vacancies at the Pentagon. LaPlante, who served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, ...
The company Silent Arrow will scale down its 1-ton cargo delivery drone to fulfill an order by the Air Force for 15 of the smaller vehicles, which will be redesigned under the new name Silent Arrow Precision Guided Bundle. The drones will be used for ...
Small businesses teaming up with nonprofit research institutions have a head start at proposing concepts for mitigating orbital debris and other aspects of on-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing. SpaceWERX director Lt. Col. Walter McMillan said SpaceWERX consulted fellow government entities, academic institutions, startups, small businesses, ...
An $88 million deal with the University of Dayton will hopefully “add a unique fresh look” at maturing artificial intelligence for Air Force autonomy applications. The agreement between the Air Force Research Laboratory and the university—a program called Soaring Otter—expands on what Kelly Miller of ...
The Space Force’s “go fast acquisition” of three new missile warning satellites passed a system-level critical design review Oct. 28 that judged how the satellites and associated ground systems will work together and how the new equipment will work with existing missile warning systems. The ...