Army inching closer to PrSM fielding with ‘successful’ qualification test flight
If a final test report is positive, the service can begin accepting early operational capability PrSM missiles before the start of 2024.
Sikorsky to reveal UK New Medium Helicopter production plans once requirements set
"We really just want to see the final tender and understand what the requirements are going to look like before we make a public announcement on our approach," said Paul Lemmo, President of Sikorsky.
Army, Lockheed ink potential $4.5B deal for JAGM, Hellfire missiles
The first installment is worth some $439 million, with an option for more over coming years.
To refill Army stockpiles, multi-year munition buys are ‘in the works’: Official
At a time when the US is continuing to pledge more and more weapons to Ukraine, the Army is eyeing ways to overcome ammunition production challenges.
Boeing Upgrades Air Defense Vs. Russians: Avenger SHORAD
Increasingly anxious about Russian drones and helicopters, the US Army is inviting contractors to demonstrate Short-Range Air Defense systems at a “SHORAD shoot-off” this September. The closest thing to an incumbent in this race is Boeing, which developed the Army’s current Avenger, an old-school unarmored Humvee carrying Stinger missile pods. Now Boeing has upgraded the […]
F-35 Wins Denmark Competition: Trounces Super Hornet, Eurofighter
[UPDATING with Aboulafia analysis of questionable pricing] The F-35 just won a competition — and it wasn’t even close. In every category, from combat performance to cost, the Danish government rated Lockheed’s F-35A Joint Strike Fighter as superior to Airbus’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing’s F/A-18F Super Hornet. What’s striking here is not that the F-35 won: Denmark […]
Bell Puts Wings On Its Next-Gen Tiltrotor, V-280
The future of tilt rotor aviation is taking shape, quite literally, at the Bell Helicopter factory in Fort Worth, where the company attached the wing of its prototype V-280 Valor to the fuselage. Now we can see in real life, not just computer drawings, what one vision for the military’s Future Vertical Lift aircraft will look […]
Rites of Spring: Mating V-280 Wing And Fuselage
CORRECTED: 280 knots equals 322 mph, not 245. Spring has sprung and at the Bell Helicopter factory in Amarillo, Texas, it’s mating season, of a sort. If all goes well, by September of next year a bird of a different feather will take flight – the V-280 Valor, a medium-lift tiltrotor transport whose wing and […]
It’s ‘War’ Twixt Appropriators & Authorizers Over RD-180s: Sen. Durbin
CAPITOL HILL: The Senate battle over Russian rockets keeps rocking. Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Shelby sent most of this morning’s defense appropriations hearing defending the Pentagon’s plan to keep using the cheap and technologically reliable but politically toxic RD-180 until an American-made replacement is ready, sometime around 2020-2021. Durbin and Shelby denounced the effort […]