Boeing announced Monday that its industry team developing a small diameter bomb II offering for the Air Force concluded a 42-month risk-reduction phase on Sept. 29. This phase concluded with a flight test of its SDB II design that, dropped from an F-15E at Eglin AFB, Fla., successfully tracked a moving target, as planned, and then struck a separate stationary target and detonated, as intended, Boeing spokesman Tim Deaton told the Daily Report Monday. “Bottom line, our weapon system has proven itself, and when this capability is available to the warfighter it will help transform the battlefield,” said Debra Rub, vice president of Boeing’s weapons programs. Boeing’s team, which, includes Lockheed Martin, is competing against Raytheon for the rights to supply the Air Force with the bomb, which is meant to attack moving surface targets. The Air Force aims to pick the winner around March 2010.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.