The Defense Acquisition Board met with Pentagon acquisition guru Ken Krieg last week, as planned, to consider the Joint Cargo Aircraft, endorsing the selection made by the Army and Air Force, reports George Talbot of the Mobile Press-Register. The DAB decided to postpone an announcement until it completed its formal paperwork; however, Pentagon officials did notify the competing teams—L-3 Communications, Alenia North America, and Boeing for the C-27J and Raytheon and EADS CASA for the C-295. A Reuters news service report quoted Pentagon spokesperson Cheryl Irwin as saying release of the winning aircraft would come within a week to 10 days. Lawmakers have complicated matters: House authorizers want to withhold JCA funding pending an intratheater airlift review, while Senate defense authorizers called for one service—the Air Force—to take over the joint program.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
