"Importantly, one of the first decisions of the Albanese Labor government after the Defense Strategic Review was to allocate $4.1 billion for long-range strike and missile manufacturing over the next four years," Pat Conroy, defense industry minister, said.
After a U.S. F-18 shot down a Syrian fighter-bomber last week, Assad’s ally, Russia, declared that it would consider shooting down any U.S. aircraft west of the Euphrates river. The White House defiantly declared the US would defend itself if attacked. Risking a war with a nuclear power over a Syrian policy that does not advance core […]
Paris Air Show attendees take note. The Navy needs more new strike fighters to cope with falling readiness rates. Will they be Super Hornets, F-35s or Block III Super Hornets? What mix does the US Navy need as it grapples with boosting the size of the fleet to 355 ships? And what about the MQ-25 […]
PARIS: Boeing Defense’s new CEO, Leanne Caret, told me this afternoon that investigating suspected hypoxia cases is “a top priority for Boeing,” and she is receiving weekly briefings on the issue. Pilots are supposed to be tough physical specimens who can handle 9 Gs and still think fast. But flying at altitude — often in […]
WASHINGTON: New aircraft make up half the Navy’s $5.3 billion unfunded requirements list of items that didn’t fit in the 2018 budget request. But while the wishlist includes several upgrades to existing vessels, as well as new landing craft and barges, it doesn’t ask for any new warships. Instead of ships, the unfunded requirements list prioritizes […]
CORRECTS: Name and title of operations group commander CREECH AIR FORCE BASE: Over two days of briefings here by everyone from pilots to maintainers to the operations group commander of the 432nd Wing, one message rang out loud and clear: the Reaper has grown into a key Close Air Support (CAS) tool for the US military and […]
The GAO’s recommendation against boosting acquisition rates for F-35 components misses the mark while the United States faces severe security threats in multiple regions around the world. America faces a dangerous fighter gap that requires buying more F-35s faster. The only way to make this happen in the present budget environment is to drive the price down — […]
Days after the Navy’s T-45 Goshawk trainers returned to flight under strict safety restrictions because of problems with their air supply, the service felt compelled to make them even stricter. An aircrew’s report of “minor headaches” prompted the tighter limits, a Navy spokesperson told Breaking Defense. Only one flight out of 92 over 48 hours reported such […]
NATIONAL HARBOR: Boeing’s proposed Block III upgrade to the Super Hornet would be a “fairly high-end” complement to the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley believes. Instead of seeing Super Hornets as a potential replacement for the F-35 — as President Trump proposed — Stackley and other naval leaders at the Sea-Air-Space conference […]
WASHINGTON: If the Navy would buy one squadron of new F-18s (known as the XT, Block 3 or Advanced Super Hornet) instead of the carrier version of the F-35 it “actually improves overall mission capability, while substantially reducing cost.” But the Navy could go even one better and buy two squadrons of the new F-18, which […]
WASHINGTON: I vividly remember Chris Bogdan’s first public appearance as the effective head of the F-35 program. It was at the Air Force Association’s annual September conference in 2012 and he said, very simply and quite passionately that the relationship between contractor Lockheed Martin and the Joint Program Office was “the worst I’ve ever seen.” […]
WASHINGTON: Two top Pentagon officials laid out a multi-pronged push to lower the price of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter below $80 million apiece. The chief of the F-35 Joint Program Office, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, and the director of defense pricing, Shay Assad, are underwhelmed by contractor Lockheed Martin‘s cost reduction efforts so far. […]
WASHINGTON: If Congress was skeptical of bombers and fighters doing Close Air Support, how will they react to MQ-9s doing the toughest CAS mission around — taking out targets in the close confines of an urban fight? Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the soon-to-retire head of Air Combat Command, told reporters this morning that the Reaper is […]
WASHINGTON: All indications from the pilots and commanders at Red Flag are that the F-35A performed far better than recent reports from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation seemed to indicate. [Read about F-35 combat performance at Red Flag 2017] The now-departed Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, Michael Gilmore, said the Lockheed Martin-built aircraft […]
WASHINGTON: The Navy needs a vastly larger fleet — 414 warships — to win a great-power war, well above today’s 274 ships or even the Navy’s unfunded plan for 355, the think-tank MITRE calculates in a congressionally-chartered study. That ideal fleet would include: 14 aircraft carriers instead of today’s 11; 160 cruisers and destroyers instead […]