Look for an announcement from Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the next few weeks about relaxation of export controls on US aerospace products. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said April 15 during an Aerospace Industries Association Capitol Hill event that the existing pre-Cold War export control regime only serves to give competitors an edge in sales when they can say that their product won’t involve the US export control system, seemingly designed to “take as much time as possible.” He added that the new export regime will recognize that the US should speedily make technology available to allies, especially if those allies are “fighting alongside us.”
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
