The US military has sewn up air supremacy “for decades to come” with its new stealth aircraft— the F-22A and the F-35—acknowledges defense analyst Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, but he believes DOD is behind the curve when it comes to developing the next “key to the future”—airbreathing hypersonic flight. Goure writes, “At present, neither DOD nor NASA are spending much money developing hypersonic capabilities.” He calls that fact “worrisome.”
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.