NBC News
Israel and the Hezbollah militant group exchanged heavy fire across Lebanon’s border on Sept. 22, fueling fears of a wider conflict in the region as the monthslong war in Gaza continues to rage. “Dozens of rockets hit Israel which destroyed homes, cars, and communities,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said on X. ... The IDF said Hezbollah launched roughly 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones at Israel. While many were intercepted by Israeli air defenses, “there were a small number of cases of hits and interception debris falling on” Israeli territory, it said.
The Hill
President Biden said the U.S. is doing “everything we can” to prevent wider war in the Middle East on Sept. 22. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out,” the president said, according to a White House pool report, responding to a question about the region’s “rising tensions.”
The Associated Press
The U.S. has kept an increased military presence in the Middle East throughout much of the past year, with about 40,000 forces, at least a dozen warships and four Air Force fighter jet squadrons spread across the region both to protect allies and to serve as a deterrent against attacks, several U.S. officials said. As attacks between Israel and Hezbollah sharply spiked, worries are growing that the conflict could escalate into an all-out war, even as Tel Aviv keeps up its nearly yearlong fight against Hamas militants in Gaza.
POLITICO
The U.S. is considering sending Ukraine a medium-range missile for its new F-16 fleet as part of a $375 million military aid package expected to be announced Sept. 23. The Joint Standoff Weapon, already used by the U.S. Air Force and Navy and a number of allies, can hit targets over 70 miles away, giving Ukraine a major upgrade to the weapons it’s using to strike Russian forces and allowing them to do it at safer distances.
Air & Space Forces Magazine
From solar and nuclear power to more efficient systems and microgrids, the Air Force is putting more and more effort into ensuring its bases and systems have steady supplies of power that are still cost effective. Keep up with all the latest news on how the service is managing its vast energy enterprise.
Breaking Defense
As the U.S. Air Force reassesses its plans for a sixth-generation fighter jet, its top civilian said the service wants to get the price per plane down to F-35 levels, about a third of what it originally projected it would pay. The problem, analysts and defense industry officials told Breaking Defense, is that it may not be realistic or even possible without a complete reimagining of how fighters and drones will fight together in the future.
Defense News
The U.S. is in the final stages of sending almost $570 million in security assistance to Taiwan—the largest such package to date, and one sure to frustrate China—according to multiple congressional aides and a U.S. official. The administration will use its fastest tool available to deliver the aid: directly shipping its own stocks, a process it’s heavily relied on to support Ukraine’s self-defense
The Wall Street Journal
The continuing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, both of which involve countries the U.S. supports, have highlighted the limitations of the Western military-industrial base and raised a critical question for Taiwan’s survival: What if the island democracy finds itself short of weapons in the event of a conflict with China?
SpaceNews
An organization formed under the U.S. Space Command to harness commercial technology for space domain awareness is taking on broader responsibilities, including using commercial space systems for battlefield intelligence. “We’re expanding,” Barbara Golf, U.S. Space Force strategic advisor and head of the Joint Task Force-Space Defense Commercial Operations (JCO), told attendees Sept. 20 at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference.
Breaking Defense
When Ukraine’s first F-16s finally arrived in country at the start of August, it was cause for much celebration by Kyiv’s supporters. And so the loss of one of those F-16s just weeks later hit especially hard, and immediately launched questions about what went wrong. ... Some details of the incident have come out, and sources have helped fill in some gaps for Breaking Defense, including around the theory that the loss was the result of shrapnel that hit the plane.
DefenseScoop
After multiple engagements with industry, the Space Force is addressing top concerns from commercial firms regarding Pentagon plans to stand up a commercial space reserve fleet—including alternatives to “denial of service” clauses and options for financial protection.
Defense News
Boeing executive Ted Colbert is out as head of the troubled firm’s defense sector, effective immediately, the company announced Sept. 20. Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a memo to employees that Steve Parker will temporarily lead Boeing Defense, Space and Security until a permanent replacement for Colbert is named. Parker is the chief operating officer for Boeing’s $32.7 billion defense sector.
Defense One
Every time a KC-135 lands, it’s greeted by a swarm of maintainers armed with three-ring binders and stacks of paper forms, sometimes tablets or laptops—all necessary to determine and document the plane’s readiness to fly again. Converting that information into a readable format to update commanders can take 14 hours. To shrink that turnaround time, the Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office is developing a prototyped “cloud in a box”—a portable data and compute center that can effectively hold the maintenance records of every aircraft the service has in a container the size of a window A/C unit.
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Aviation Week
Boeing is set to deliver the fifth T-7A Red Hawk trainer to the U.S. Air Force for testing and will soon begin long-awaited high angle-of-attack tests as it comes out of a summer that saw supply chain and reliability issues setting back the process.
One More Thing
The War Zone
Collins Aerospace has put forward a vision for what a high-end air combat engagement between the U.S. and Chinese armed forces, with the American side employing crewed fighters and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone wingmen, could look like in the future.
