Northrop 
Grumman rolled out the first of the Navy’s unmanned combat aircraft system vehicles at a Dec. 16 ceremony at one of its production facilities in Palmdale, Calif. In a company statement, Scott Winship, Northrop VP and UCAS program manager, described the X-47B aircraft as a “sea change in military aviation.” It took just over a year for the Northrop team to assemble the aircraft after receiving the demonstration program contract in August 2007. Navy Capt. Martin Deppe, the service’s UCAS program manager, called the X-47B “a necessary first step” that would lead to the introduction of “a new long-range, persistent, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)-strike capability” for the carriers of tomorrow. Following subsystem and structural testing, Northrop expects the X-47B to fly for the first time next fall, with sea trials slated to begin in late 2011. The company already is performing initial assembly for a second X-47B that it expects to complete next year. The program started out as a joint effort between the Navy and Air Force, but the last Quadrennial Defense Review ceded the J-UCAS to the Navy alone.
NASA Boss: Race to Moon Has National Security Stakes
Sept. 15, 2026
NASA is pushing hard to get astronauts back to the moon by 2028—and the urgency is driven in no small part by the national security implications of doing so before China does, Administrator Jared Isaacman said Sept. 15.
